Abstract
In offering this advice on the reading of scripture, Cistercian monk Arnoul of Bohériss (fl. 1200) provides a useful example of the place of the bible in the meditative traditions of medieval monasticism. For Arnoul, scripture was studied not in order to confer knowledge (scientia) upon the reader; rather, the words of scripture were to be savoured and digested in such a way that they would provide the fertile subject matter for prayer and contemplation. In this long-standing tradition of prayerful reading — lexio divina — the divine words of scripture were ruminated upon and literally ‘tasted’ with the heart. Arnoul’s counsel, concerning the reading of scripture, contrasts instructively with the position of the Calvinist theologian Lambert Daneau (1530-95), who some three and a half centuries later was to suggest, to the contrary, that one should indeed search for ‘science’ within the pages of scripture. In his Physica Christiana (‘Christian Physics’, 1576), Daneau argued that the book of Genesis was a ‘Treatise of Naturall Philosophie’ penned by Moses. Daneau’s English translator went so far as to insist that all true natural philosophy was ‘founded uppon the assured round of Gods word and holy Scriptures’.2
When he reads, let him seek for savour, not science. The Holy Scripture is the well of Jacob from which the waters are drawn which will be poured out later in prayer. Thus there will be no need to go to the oratory to begin to pray; but in reading itself, means will be found for prayer and contemplation.1
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Notes
Arnoul of Bohériss, Speculum monachorum I, Patrologia cursus completes, series Latina, ed. J. -P. Migne (Paris, 1844–1905), vol. 184, p. 1175 [Hereafter PL].
Lambert Daneau, The Wonderful Woorkmanship of the World (London, 1578), sigs. 17v, 18r. On the genre of ‘Mosaic philosophy’ of which Daneau is a representative, see Ann Blair, ‘Mosaic Physics and the Search for a Pious Natural Philosophy in the Late Renaissance’, Isis 91 (2000), 32–58; Kathleen Crowther-Heyck, ‘Mosaic Philosophy: The Role of Hermeneutics in a Scripture-Based Philosophy’, forthcoming.
Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Augustine’s four senses are historia, allegoria, analogia, aetiologia. See De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber (PL, vol. 34, p. 222); De doctrina christiana, 3.30–37. On Augustine as a semiotician, see Tzvetan Todorov, Theories of the Symbol (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), p. 40; R. A. Markus, ‘St. Augustine on Signs’, and Darrell Jackson, ‘The Theory of Signs in Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana’,
both in R. A. Markus (ed.), Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Doubleday, 1972), pp. 61–91, 92–147; G. H. Allard, ‘L’articulation du sens et du signe dans le De doctrina christiana’, Studia patristica 14 (1976), 388–89.
Hugh of St. Victor, De tribus diebus (PL, vol. 122, pp. 176, 814B—C). For typical medieval uses of book metaphors see William of Conches, Philosophia Mundi, 1.1–3 (PL, vol. 72, p. 21); Hugh of Saint Victor, De tribus diebus 4 (PL, vol. 176, p. 814B); Alanus de Insulis, De miseria mundi, in Guido Dreves (ed.), Ein Jahrtausend lateinischer Hymnendichtung, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1909), vol. 1, p. 288. See also Harrison, Bible and the Rise of Natural Science, pp. 44–56;
Wanda Cizewski, ‘Reading the World as Scripture: Hugh of St. Victor’s De tribus diebus’, Florilegium 9 (1987), 65–88;
R. D. Crouse, ‘Intentio Moysi: Bede, Augustine, Eriugena and Plato in the Hexaemeron of Honorius Augustodunensis’, Dionysius 2 (1978), 137–57;
Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 319;
Willemien Otten, ‘Nature and Scripture: Demise of a Medieval Analogy’, Harvard Theological Review 88 (1995), 257–84.
Aquinas, Summa theologiae, (London, Blackfriars, 1964–76), la. 1, 10 [Hereafter ST]. Compare Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, chap. 4, lec. 7. Some scholars have suggested that Thomas’s exegesis represents a significant break with the Origenist-Augustinian approach. See, for example, Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd revised edition (New York: Philosophical Library, 1952), pp. xv, 41, 263, 292–94, 300–302. The influential historian of biblical exegesis Henri de Lubac has argued, to the contrary, that Thomas accepted the traditional approach, Exégèse médiévale, les quatre sens de l’Ecriture, 2 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1964), vol. 2, pp. 272–302.
Luther, Answer to the Hyperchristian Book, in Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehman (eds), Luther’s Works, 55 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–75), pp. 39, 177; Babylonian Captivity of the Church, in Charles Jacobs (ed. and trans.), Three Treatises (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970), pp. 146, 241; John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 2.5.19; 3.4.4–5 and his Commentary on Galatians, 4:22–26, Commentary on Genesis, 2:8; Isaiah 33:18; Jeremiah 31:24; Daniel 8:20–25; 10:6. On the hermeneutics of the reformers see
W. Hazlett, ‘Calvin’s Latin Preface to his Proposed French Edition of Chrysostom’s Homilies: Translation and Commentary’, in James Kirk (ed.), Humanism and Reform (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 129–50;
Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), chap. 6;
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Reformation of the Bible, the Bible of the Reformation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996);
John L. Thompson, ‘Calvin as a Biblical Interpreter’, in Donald K. McKim (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 58–73.
Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 37.
Lawrence Stone, ‘Literacy and Education in England, 1640–1900’, Past and Present 42 (1969), 67–139 at 78.
Robert Boyle, Usefulness of Natural Philosophy, in Thomas Birch (ed.), The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, 6 vols. (1744, reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1966), vol. 2, pp. 62–63.
Stuart Clarke, ‘The Reformation of the Eyes: Apparitions and Visual Deception in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Journal of Religious History 27 (2003), 143–60.
Peter Harrison, ‘Original Sin and the Problem of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, Journal of the History of Ideas 63 (2002), 239–59.
Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). For examples of patristic and medieval views, see Gregory, Moralia, 6.61; Aquinas, ST, 2a 2ae. 179–82; Walter Hilton, Scale of Perfection, 1.2. For secondary accounts,
see Mary Elizabeth Mason, Active Life and Contemplative Life: A Study of the Concepts from Plato to the Present (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1961);
Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism: The Teaching of Augustine, Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1966); Anne-Marie La Bonnardière, ‘Les deux vies. Marthe et Marie (Luc 10, 38, 42)’, in Anne-Marie La Bonnardière (ed.), Saint Augustin et la Bible (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986), pp. 147–52.
See, for example, Graham Ward, ‘Allegoria: Reading as a Spiritual Exercise’, Modern Theology 15 (1999), 271–95.
Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, 1.2.2; 1.31.34; 1.4.4; Works, pp. 11, 106, 121, 108. Compare Augustine, City of God, 15.7. See also W. R. O’Connor, ‘The Uti-frui Distinction in Augustine’s Ethics’, Augustinian Studies 14 (1983), 45–62.
For Calvin’s teachings on utility, see Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, Matthew 25:15, Calvin’s Commentaries, 17.443. Cf. Calvin’s Commentaries, 6.104; 21.115. For the impact of his ideas in seventeenth-century England, see David Little, Religion, Order, and Law: A Study in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 60.
See, for example, Origen, Homilies in Leviticus, 5.2, FC, pp. 83, 91f.; Gregory, Homiliae in Evangelium, 29; Ambrose, Hexameron, 6.2.3; Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio, 4.1. Also see Patricia Cox, ‘Origen and the Bestial Soul’, Vigiliae Christianiae 36 (1982), 115–40 at 123;
Rudolf Allers, ‘Microcosmos from Anaximandros to Paracelsus’, Traditio 2 (1944), 318–407.
On this general theme, see Peter Harrison, ‘Reading the Passions: The Fall, the passions, and dominion over nature’, in Stephen Gaukroger (ed.), The Soft Underbelly of Reason: The Passions in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 49–78.
Raymond Sebonde, Theologia naturalis seu liber creaturarum, ed. Freidrich Stegmüller (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann, 1966), prologus.
It is significant, in this connection, that the terms ‘natural religion’ and ‘revealed religion’ do not enter the English lexicon until the middle of the seventeenth century. Harrison, Religion’ and the religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 24, 185 n. 19.
Bacon, Works, vol. 3, pp. 340–43. Thus Paolo Rossi: ‘Bacon’s rejection of any natural philosophy founded on allegorical interpretations of scriptures meant a withdrawal from exemplarism and symbolism, both common features of medieval philosophy and still flourishing in the seventeenth century.’ ‘Bacon’s Idea of Science’, in Markku Peltonen (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Bacon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 25–46 at 32.
Plato’s assertions about ‘becoming God-like’ do not, however, have the same spiritual overtones. See, for example, Daniel C. Russell, ‘Virtue as “Likeness to God” in Plato and Seneca’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 42 (2004), 241–60.
Aquinas, ST, la. 12. 5. More specifically, ‘when any created intellect sees the essence of God, the essence of God itself becomes the intelligible form of the intellect.’ Ibid. Thomas’s emphasis on deification is owing partly to the influence of the neo-Platonised Aristotelianism found in medieval Arab sources. See Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, trans. and ed. Michael Allen and James Hankins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), vol. 1, pp. x—xi, p. 11;
Paul O. Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, trans. V. Conant (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), pp. 117f.;
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones, ed. B. Kieszkowski (Genève: Librarie Droz, 1973), pp. 34, 84.
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Harrison, P. (2007). Reinterpreting Nature in Early Modern Europe: Natural Philosophy, Biblical Exegesis and the Contemplative Life. In: Killeen, K., Forshaw, P.J. (eds) The Word and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230206472_2
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