symbolism in medieval literature

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Symbolism in Medieval LiteratureAuthor(s): Morton W. BloomfieldSource: Modern Philology, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Nov., 1958), pp. 73-81Published by: The University of Chicago Press

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74 MORToN W. BLOOMFIELD

SchooPl3ndultimatelyotheStoics,datesfrom he publicationof HarryCaplan'sarticle"The Four SensesofScripture"n

Speculumn 1929and of Dr. H. Flanders

Dunbar's Symbolismn MedievalThoughtand Its Consummationn the ivine Come-

dy in 1929.4Since that time,medievalscholars and literary tudentshave in-creasinglyconcentrated n interpretingmedieval iteraturenterms f he

exegeti-cal method sedinmedievalbiblicalcriti-cism, t least in theearlierMiddleAges.5

It seemsto me that thismethod,whilenot totallywrong, s essentially rroneousas a method ofunderstandingmostme-dieval literaryworkshistorically,nd itis the purpose of this article to discussbrieflyhe implicationsnd limitsof thismethod n the studyof medieval secularliterature, speciallyof the later MiddleAges.

First of all, it mustbe admitted hatmeaningis at least partiallysymbolic.A literaryworkof any sort and of anyperiod lwayshassome ymbolicmeaning.Beyond the fact that language itself sa systemofsound and written ymbols,which s of ittlesignificanceo mymainpoint, hesubstance nd figuresf itera-turemust tandformore hanthemselves

if theyare to be fully meaningful. heunique has a meaningof a special sort.

l'image de Dieu," Revue des sciences philosophiques et

thbologiques, L (1956), 453, n. 20, and 455, where theliteralness of Origen's biblical exegesis is emphasized.

3The Antiochene school, which emphasized theliteralmore than the spiritualsense (to use inexact butcommon termsforthe sake ofconvenience), was, how-ever, always opposed to Alexandrine flights f fancy.

Its influence, chiefly expressed through Theodore ofMopsuestia (although Ambrosiaster, John Chrysos-tom, and Juniliusmust not be neglected), never com-

pletelydied in the Middle Ages and in the early periodis to be found in Ireland and elsewhere, notably Eng-land and northern France. See M. L. W. Laistner,"Antiochene Exegesis in Western Europe during theMiddle Ages," HTR, XL (1947), 19-31; Alberto Vac-

cari, "La Teoria esegetica della scuola antiochena,"Scritti di erudizione e di filologia, I (Rome, 1952), 101-42

(reprintedfrom Biblica, 1920 and 1934); and the im-portantarticleby Bernard Bischoff, Wendepunkte inder Geschichte der lateinische Exegese im Frfihmit-telalter," Sacris erudiri,V (1954), 189-281. The latterprotests against thefacile settingofAlexandria againstAntioch in the early Middle Ages. He points out thateven Bede, who did much to push the Alexandrinemethod, was essentially historical in his exegesis. In

fact, the whole subject seems to be hopelessly con-fused. One thing is certain that, except for typology(the veiled prediction of Christ in the Old Testa-ment), at no time did any biblical exegete repudiatethe importance and often the primacy of the biblicalletter. There are, however, degrees of emphasis.

Even Augustine's De doctrina Christiana, which issupposed to have established the fourfoldmethod fortfheMiddle Ages, contains no reference t all to it. Infact, fh ole point ofthat work as regards the Bibleis that what is taught is clearly taughtf,nd, if t is oc-casionally obscure, it is elsewhere in the Bible madevery plain. Augustine does refer, t is true, to a four-fold method of interpretingthe Bible in De utilitatecredendi (PL, XLII, 68 if.) and De genesiad litteram

2 (PL, XXXIV, 222), but the four meanings are his-tory (the letter), etiology (normal explanation ofdiffi-cult biblical passages fto Christian), analogy (typol-ogy or agreementof the two Testaments), and allegory(figurativemeaning, usually typology). The recogni-tion of the figurativemeaning of parts of the OldTestament is either typology as found in the NewTestament itself or the normal application of a cri-terionofmeaning to a written text. In practice, how-ever, Augustine frequently does indulge in symbolicbiblical exegesis. Gregorythe Great by his practice didperhaps more to make the early Middle Ages passover the literal for the figurative (usually moral)meaning of the Bible than anyone else. He had greatinfluence on Bede and Rabanus Maurus, the most im-

portant of the early medieval biblical commentators.For some recent discussions of Augustine's exegeticalmethods see Maurice Pontet, L'Ezxgksede S. Augustin

predicateur "Theologie: 6tudes publi~es sous la direc-tion de la Facult6 de Theologie S.J. deyon-Fourvi~reeParis, 944?i), and Allen A. Gilmore, "Augustine andthe Critical Method," HTR, XXXIX (1946), 141-63.Neither Augustine, Gregory, nor Bede thought of aconsistent and continuous multileveled interpretationof Scripture butf hat the nature of the particular textdetermined the "level" desired. Bede, for example,gives as an example oftropology John 3 : 18, which hesays must be taken literally, and of anagogy Matt.5:8, which also

mustbe

tfaken iterally(see his De

tabernacula i [PL, XCI, 410B-411B]).

SThere are, ofcourse, earliertreatmentsofthe sub-

ject in English; e.g., Frederic W. Farrar, History ofInterpretation: Eight Lectures Preached before the Uni-versity fOxford .. (London, 1886), and H. PreservedSmith, Essays in Biblical Interpretation (Boston,1921).

6For a good summary of early Christian exegesisand a review of recent literature on the subject seeWalter J. Burchardt, "On Early Christian Exegesis,"Theological Studies, XI (1950), 78-116. The literatureon patristic and medieval exegesis is too vast to besuitably summarized here.My comments n thispapershould not, ofcourse,be interpretedto mean that I do

not believe that traditional biblical exegesis is notof great value in interpretingbiblical allusions andsymbols when used by medieval authors.







SYMBOLISM IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 75

IfHamlet s onlyHamlet,he is a primarydatum; but if he stands for man in adilemma, r a truth-seeker,ra ditherer,

he has another dimension.Althoughts

attentionmay be captured by it, thehumanmindcomprehendshesingularna specialwayand notcompletelyntellec-tually-a limitation,ncidentally, f hu-man creaturelinesso medieval scholasti-cism.Meaning n iterature omes hroughtheuniquebut is notequivalent o it.

In this ense, ll literature as a nucleusand a cortex nd conveys ententia.6his

is no peculiarityof medieval literatureand thought.Historically, fcourse,me-dieval man tendedto think n Christian

categories, nd mostfrequentlyhe sen-tentiahe put intoordiscovered n litera-turewas a Christian ne. ndeed,noprop-er understanding f medieval literatureis possiblewithout good knowledge fthe Christiancategoriesof thought ndbeliefs.Yet medieval man was also the

heir of late classical antiquityand ofbarbarian cultures, nd theircategoriesof thought,their literary genres,theirpointsofview,were lso partofhis herit-age. He was well aware of a secular radi-tionwhichhadnotbeencompletelyrans-formed y Christianity.

Christianityave meaning o existencefor medieval man, was the frameworkof histhought enerally,nd was backed

by the state and societywith a strengthand vigorno longerdisplayed oday.Theveryform f the universe,with ts hier-archyofbeing,as reflectedn nature, nsociety, n the church, nd in the nextworld, upported view of a providentialandordered niverse.What couldbemore

natural-indeed, inevitable-than to seea Christian ententian secular iteratureif that literaturewere to have any deepand

importantmeaningt all. The Bible

was, of course,in a class by itself, sthe composition f God through ariousgifted ndgracedmen to revealhisTruthto all men.

What also could be more naturalthanthatstudents hould be taughtthe letterand thesensus nd thesententia7fa text.Althoughwe do not use the terms,westill do so today if the instructions

more thanmemorywork.However, henas now, suspect, hesensus nd sententiagotless emphasis n practice han n the-ory.A glanceat medievalcommentaries,especially f the earlier eriod, n secularworks nd evenoccasionally n theBibleshowsfor he mostpartan overwhelminginterest n the purely grammatical ndrhetorical.

The first bjection, hen,to the sym-

bolicapproach s not that tfinds Chris-tian sententia n medieval iterature utthat tassumes hatthis ymbolicmethodis unique to the period and that thereis no essentialdifferenceetween iteraryworks nd theological r pastoralworks.It misunderstandshenatureofmeaningand of iterature.t neglects heconcretefor the universal and assumes that theconcrete xistsonlyforthe universal n

a workof art,swhich is not true even

6On the historyof sententia, ee G. Par6, A. Bru-net, and P. Tremblay, La Renaissance du XIIe siacle,les gcoles et I'enseignement ("Publications de 1'Institutd'etudes M~di~valesd'Ottawa," Vol. III [Paris andOttawa, 1933]), pp. 267 if. Isidore ofSeville interpretsit to be an impersonal general dictum fromwhich itsgeneral,but not only,medieval meaningof"meaning"or "truth" probably derives.

SAs at least John of Salisbury and Hugh of St.Victorput it (see Pare, Brunet,and Tremblay, p. 116).

8 ". .. All the senses are founded on one--the lit-eral-from which alone can any argument be drawn"(Thomas Aquinas, ST i, q.1, a.10). "He [Aristotle]hasto do this [criticizethe obvious sense ofPlato's words]because Plato's method of teaching was faulty; heconstantlyused figures fspeech, teaching by symbolsand givinghis words a meaning quite otherthan theirliteral sense" (Aquinas, Commentary on De animai. 3, lectio 8, trans. K. Foster and S. Humphries [Lon-don, 1951], p. 107). Cf. Wyclif (De benedicta incarna-

cione iii, ed. Edward Harris [London: Wyclif Society,1886], pp. 37 if.,esp. p. 40), who argues forthe impor-tance ofthe literalmeaningofScripture.This attitufdecan be found everywhere in later Middle Ages (seebelow, p. 76).








monest objects and animals embracewide varietyof meanings,often contra-dictory.'3The meaningcould be inter-

preted only in context, f at all, andeven thenmultiple nterpretations ouldfrequentlye possible.'4

It was also at all timesrecognizedhatthe Bible could be taken symbolicallyonlypartially.Much ntheOldTestamentis literallybinding on Christians,andpartsof heNewTestamentmustbe meta-phorically nterpreted.'5 lthoughsomeparts and elements of the Old Testa-

ment were usually interpretedymboli-cally, there is no evidence whatsoeverfora consistent pplicationof any levelof meaninginterpretationn Scripture.One of thebasic arguments or hetruthof Jesus' claimsis that he fulfils ertainOldTestament rophecies nd, ngeneral,givesa profoundchristological)ense tothatcollection f divinebooks.Typology,as it is called, s found n the New Testa-

ment tselfwhereOld Testamentproph-

ecies and figures re applied to the ful-filmentn Christ.'6Certain otherpartsof the Bible tend to be morally nter-

preted.Babylonand Egypt,for xample,are always the supremetypes of evil.This interpretations obvious and doesnotrequire nyspecial nsight r methodbeyond a normal intelligent eadingofthe text.

Fourth, hepolysemanticchoolmakesno differenceetweenthe Bible whichwas dictatedby God in the form f theHoly Ghost and literaryworks written

purelyby sinful nd erringman. Thereis very ittleevidence hat the atterwerewritten o be interpretedonsistentlyna symbolicmanner, eyond he normal e-mands of literary igurativexpression.'7

13Augustine (De doctrina Christiana iii. 25) recog-nizes that one and the same thing (his examples arethe lion, serpent,and bread) may have different ndeven opposing meanings; see also G. G. Coulton, Artand the Reformation (2d ed.; Cambridge, England,1953), Appendix 18, p. 554, who refersto the sixteenmeanings forthe peacock; and D. W. Robertson, Jr.,and Bernard F. Huppe, Piers Plowman and ScripturalTradition (Princeton, 1951), pp. 5-6, who point to theseven meanings of dormitio.

14Dante in De monarchia III, iv, 6, recognizes how

easy it is to misinterpret he "sensum misticum."

'5 See Jean Dani~lou, Essai sur le mystkrede l'his-

toire (Paris, 1953), p. 211."Si vero aperte fidempredicat vel bonos mores as-truit,sive hoc sit ita quod vetat flagitiumvel facinus,sive sit ita quod utilitatem vel beneficentiamiubet,sive sit ita quod radicem omnium malorumexstirpat. . non est ad aliud refferendumuasi figurativedic-

tum,quia per hoc vigor eorum eneruaretur" (Ulrich ofStrassburg,Liber de summobono , tr. 2, cap. 11, ed. J.Daguillon [Paris, 1930], pp. 59-60).

"We must discover firstof all, whetherthe [bibli-call expression which we are tryingto understand isliteral or figurative" (Augustine De doctrina iii. 24,trans. John J. Gavigan, The Fathers of the Church: ANew Translation [New York, 1947]). Gerald ofBolo-gna in his Summa Q. XI, a.1, written n 1317, makesthis same point (that the Old Testament is not alwaysto be taken allegorically) (see Paul de Vooght, LesSources de la doctrine chritienne . . . [Bruges, 1954], pp.425-26).

16For a study of the use of typology by the NewTestament writers and its general background, seeLeonhard Goppelt, Typos: Die typologische Deutungdes Alten Testaments im Neuen ("BeitrBige zur Fijrde-rung ChristlicherTheologie," ed. Schlatter and Alt-haus, Vol. II, No. 43 [Giitersloh,1939]).

St. Thomas Aquinas says that the literal is whatthe author intends,the spiritualwhat God intends. In

the eyes ofGod the whole Bible is, however,clear andliteral: "Quia vero sensus litteralis est quem auctorintendit,auctor sacrae Scripturae Deus est, qui omniasimul suo intellectu comprehendit: non est incon-veniens . . . si etiam secundum litteralem sensum, inuna littera Scripturae, plures sint sensus" (ST i, q.1,a.10, in c). This statementimplies that only God com-poses polysemously. See below, next paragraph.

17 Auctor sacrae Scripturae est Deus in cujus po-testate est ut non solum voces ad significandumac-commodet (quod etiam homo facere potest), sedetiam res ipsas" (Aquinas ST i, q.1, a.10). Thomasspecificallydenies a spiritual sense in writingsotherthan the Bible in Quodl. vii, a. 16, quoting Gregorythe

Great, Moralia22.

The whole pointof the creed is

that it is literallytrue on the authorityoffaith as in-terpreted by the church, unlike art, which is onlymetaphoricallytrue. In one sense the Bible is not sym-bolic at all but completely literal, i.e., true. Cf. "Incaeteris igitur scripturis solae voces significantur,nscriptura divina non solum voces, sed etiam res sig-nificativae sunt quamvis non in omnibus" (Conrad ofHirsau, Dialogus super auctores sive Didascalon, ed.G. Schepss [Wiirzburg, 1889], p. 75) and "sciendumest etiam quod in divino eloquio non tantum verba,sed etiam res significarehabent" (Hugo ofSt. Victor,PL, CLXXVI, 790).

"In liberalibus disciplinisubi non res sed dumtaxatverba significant,quisquis primo sensu litterae con-tentus non est, aberrare videtur mihi" (Johnof Salis-bury, Polycraticus,ed. Webb, vii. 12, p. 144). I owethis last referenceto Jean Misrahi's excellent reviewin Romance Philology, IV (1951), 350.







78 MORTON W. BLOOMFIELD

To supposethatmedievalmanwouldpre-sume to put himself n the level ofGodin the writing f literature f whatever

sort s surelymost astounding.To thinkthat he would write iterature,whichtohim was both for sentence nd solace,merelyoconvey rofoundeligiousruthsclothed nmany-coloredallegory" eemstome toinvolve greatmisunderstandingof that literature nd that man. I donotdeny n occasional ymbolic eferencebasedonstandard iblical nterpretations,but to imagine consistentnd elaborate

systematic pplicationof a

multilayeredweb ofsymbolisms unthinkable.It is also true that certain classical

worksespeciallyveneratedby the Mid-dle Ages,theAeneid, heMetamorphoses,for example,were also occasionally n-terpreted y the symbolicmethod.Eventhesespecialcases, however, id notpasswithout protest.'s No medieval writerwould ever think of himself n a levelwiththesemasters, nd themethodwaschieflysed to Christianize aganwriters.And no one ever maintainedthat Ovidor Virgilhad put the symbolism herehimself.

It must be remembered hat the ad-vocates ofsecular iteraturentheMiddleAges were on the defensive.The paganworldliness f much of it clashed withChristian therworldliness,nd thosewholoved the ancientpoets were hard putto defend their poetry.The only wayout, as the accessus and glossesto manya classical and pagan work show, wasto argue strongly orthe utilitasofsuchliterature, nd utilitasmeant findingmoralmeaning.

The medieval scholastics followingAristotlegave, in general,a very lowposition in the soul to imagination nd

a very owrank opoetrynthehierarchyof the "sciences."'9To most,poetrywasa branch of logic, but the lowest andweakestbranch.This createddifficulties,as Thomas' remarkshow:

The scienceof poetry ertains o thosethingswhich ecauseoftheir ack oftruthcannot e grasped yreason; hereforet isnecessaryhatreason e almost eguiled ysuch imilitudes.heology, owever,ertainsto those hings hich re bove eason,nd o

thesymbolicmethods commono bothasneithers proportionedo reason In sent. .prol. . 5. 3].

Yet, havingquickly emoved heprob-lem of certain similarities etweenpo-etry nd theology, homasgivesnomorethought o thisuselessart. Those on thedefensivewere the men who, like Boc-caccio, felt that they must defendtheclaims of poetryand could do so onlybyarguinghat t contained "sentence."Yet this argumentwas obviouslynevertakenveryseriously y the real thinkersof the Middle Ages, who were contentto ignorethe so-calledclaims of poetryas beneath reason and the concern ofrationalmen who did not need fictatosee thetruth.Reason, authority,nd di-vine revelationwerethe ways to truth.We have little evidence that the sup-portersof poetrydid in fact interprettheirpoetry s symbolic,n spite of thetheories f some ofthem.

Then common ensemust step in. Ina poem like Piers Plowman, s in manymedieval iteraryworks, heobvious ech-nique is personification,ot symbolism.Personificationsmakingwhat s abstractconcrete. t cannotnormallyhave moremeaningsthan what it says. If Mercy

18 ee Par6, Brunet, and Tremblay, pp. 119-21. Itwas Macrobius who probably first uggested for theMiddle Ages that the great classical poets consciouslyused "allegory" (see, on the allegorizing of Virgil,Pierre Courcelle, "Les Pores de l'6glise devant les en-fers virgiliens," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litt4-

raire du moyenge, XXII [1955], 5-74). Much earlier,of course, the Stoics and Alexandrines had "allegor-ized" Homer to theirtaste and no doubt set a pattern.

19See Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literatureand the Latin Middle Ages, trans. W. R. Trask (Lon-don, 1953), p. 224.








kisses Peace, what else does that meanthan that peace and mercyembrace?20Symbolism s used but not in any wideand consistent

attern.St. Eucher ofLyons is apparently heonlypatristic uthorwho admitted hatsecular workscouldhave levelsof mean-

ing.21All the otherFathersortheologiansI have been able to examine,whentheydo not tacitly assume its applicabilityonly to Scripture,reserve the methodexclusively orbiblicalexegesis.

If the purposeofscholarships to de-termine hehistorical ircumstances ur-

rounding workof art and theprobableintention f the author in termsof hisbackground nd the evidenceof the textitself, hen the burden ofproof ies withthose who would claim a religious ym-bolic multileveledmeaningfor medievalliterature.fthis s not theaimof cholar-

ship, hen,ofcourse, here s noobjectionto finding ny meaningormeaningsonewants in the literary elics of the past.The really serious reason for opposingthisprocedures thehistorical xactitudewhich is claimed or implied. One can,if one chooses, nterpret workof itera-ture in any way whatsoever,providedthat one does not claim to be therebyrevealingthe conscious ntention f theauthor.

In view of the fact that the historicaltrend was moving way from he heavysymbolic nterpretationf Scripture ndthat a secular tradition f entertainmentand literaturewas very much alive inthe Middle Ages, it seems to me thattobelievethatthe medieval uthorwouldpresumeto write as God wrotethroughhis chosen servants n Holy Scripture s

the heightof folly. This, of course, isnotto denythat n certain iteraryworks-possibly the DivineComedy,nthe caseofwhichthere s some evidencefor the

assumption, lthoughnot totallyabovequestion-themultiplemethodmayhavebeen used. It is, however, he task ofthe historicalscholar who makes sucha claim to substantiate t in each case.The DivineComedy,f t is an exception,is almostthe exceptionwhichprovestherule. t is significant,s Auerbachpointsout,22 hat Dante arrogatesto himself,againstall precedence,

olysemy-aspe-

cialmissionnkeepingwithhishighviewof himself s poet and prophet.Evenin the Divine Comedy, owever,t is im-possibleto workout a consistent ourfoldscheme ofmeaning.23he basic and im-portant meaningof the Divine Comedyexceptn thecaseof few bvious ymbolsis its literalmeaning. ndividualsymbolsare often sed thereinn multiple enses,butthisfact s notequivalent o discover-ing a consistent our-or threefold evelof meaning.And, as we have alreadyadmitted, ll meaning s, at least to someextent, symbolic. In every sin there is

20See Robert Worth Frank, Jr., "The Art of Read-

ing Medieval Personification Allegory," ELH, XX

(1953), 237-50, for an excellent discussion of this pointas well as other related ones.

21 See Andr6 P6zard, Dante sous la pluie de feu (En-fer, Chant X V) ("etudes de philosophie m6di6vale,"Vol. XL [Paris, 1950]), pp. 382-84,

22 See his "Figurative Texts Illustrating CertainPassages of Dante's Commedia," Speculum, XXI(1946), 475, n. 5. Cf. "To claim to use the allegory ofthe theologians (as Dante did in his letter to CanGrande) is to remove The Divine Comedyfrom thecategory of poetry as his contemporariesunderstoodit" (JosephA. Mazzeo, "Dante's Conception ofPoeticExpression," Romanic Review, XLVII [1956], 241;

see also his "Dante and the Pauline Modes ofVision,"HTR, L [1957], 275-306). Dante thoughtof himself sprophetratherthan poet, and perhaps on a level withPaul and Moses (see also Curtius, pp. 221 if. and 377:". .. Dante believed that he had an apocalyptic mis-

sion'"').28 A recentattempt is by Dorothy L. Sayers in In-

troductory Papers on Dante (London, 1954), who pre-sumes at last to tell the simple truth. She findsmostastoundinglythat the allegorical (in its narrowmean-ing ofa level) sense has to mean thehistoricalorpoliti-cal level of meaning (pp. 104-5) and gives us only afew generalized clues to this quadruple meaning thatshe claims to have found in the poem. A number ofgreat Dante scholars have denied that there are sys-

tematic levels of meaning in the poem at all. I havenever seen this fourfoldmeaning completely workedout in thecase ofany literarywork, ncludingDante's.







SYMBOLISM IN M/EDIEVAL LITERATURE 81

Mere assertion and the quotation ofa theological rpastoral ext renotsatis-factory roofs.One cannotperhapsade-

quatelyproveany nterpretationf itera-

ture,but if the words of the text aretaken as of primary mportance, hereis always a court ofappeal. Withsixteenmeanings or hepeacock,who sto decidebetween hem?

Finally, the assumption f the organ-ized use of the symbolicmethod nmedi-eval literatures essentially implistic.timposes non-historicalrder nd system

on what was in fact disordered nd un-systematic.The theologiansof the highMiddle Ageswere saddled witha theoryof levels of meaningsfromearly Chris-tianity and had to give lip service totheprinciple, utactually herewasnever

any consistentpplicationof thattheoryanywhere t any time, except forpar-ticularbiblicalpassages, n Christianme-

dieval exegesis nd, above all, in literarycomposition.I would ike toconcludewith hewords

ofRogerBacon:In sensu itteraliacettotaphilosophiaeo-

testas,n naturistproprietatibuserumatu-ralium,rtificialiumtmoralium;tpercon-venientesdaptationest imilitudineslician-tur ensuspirituales.t sic simul ciaturso-ciatur?]hilosophiaum heologia...7OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

27Opus tertium, 4, ed. Brewer, p. 81. Cf. "Free-dom ofthoughtwas not repressedin the Middle Ages.It was fosteredby theallegoricalmethod of nterpreta-tion,wherebythephilosopher could connect his privatetheorywith established truth" (E. K. Rand, "Medie-val Gloom and Medieval Uniformity," Speculum, I[1926], 267). Cf. also Erasmus' attacks on the methodin his Praise of Folly.

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