The main thrust of this thesis is to exhibit St Antony as a Biblical theologian, and as far as possible to uncover his method of handling Scripture so as to explain it and then preach it. To do this, we must first see how medieval theologians in general understood their task. The motto ‘Contemplata aliis tradere’ is a not inapt expression of their understanding. The prayerful study of the Sacred Page led to a sharing of what had been gained from it with others. Scripture provided the theologian with his raw data; prayer gave him an empathy with this material in his study of it; but the need to communicate its teaching exposed a difficulty, which I will state as follows:

Every religion that gives a central place to a Sacred Book or Books must, sooner or later, confront the problem of how to find in the unchanging word a continuing relevance and application to a changing world. The Jews faced this problem in an acute form at the Exile, and again after the destruction of the Second Temple in AD70. The Christian Church, which also grew out of Second Temple Judaism, faced this problem in parallel with the Rabbis, and there was from the beginning a cross-fertilization of the two strains of exegesis. One technique for solving the basic problem, common to many religions, is to ‘allegorize’ the text- that is, to take the sacred text in a non-literal way, so that what originally referred to concrete historical facts now (also or instead) refers to timeless spiritual truths. Neither Rabbinic Judaism nor Christianity was willing to abandon its Abrahamic, Mosaic and Davidic heritage; but what was its continuing significance?

Characteristic of Judeo-Christian theology is a concept of history as linear rather than cyclic, running from the beginning of time to its end under the rule of God creator and perfector. A cyclic element is present in the liturgical year growing out of the agricultural year, but this is seen in the context of the overarching linear progress. The time process derives its meaning from the fact that through it God reveals himself; from this derives the importance of particular happenings and human choices. In Christianity, there is added the idea of prophecy fulfilled in Christ’s first coming, or to be fulfilled in his second.

Christianity therefore developed a typological method, seeing God’s revelation of himself to the prophets and patriarchs of the Old Testament as foreshadowing his complete self-disclosure in the life and teaching of Jesus. This emphasis on types and fulfilment

1) gives an eternal meaning to the particularities of history;

2) implies a divinely ordained progress through history.

As I see it, the exegetical problem may be summarised as follows:

1. ‘Sacred History’ is not the same as ‘Sacred Scripture’. With regard to history, we may ask not only ‘What happened?’ but ‘Why did it happen?’ This second question is ambiguous. It may mean, ‘What were the antecedents? What led up to this event?’- and this is a purely historical question, even though we may have no means of answering it.

2. However, the question ‘Why?’ may mean ‘To what end? For what purpose?’, referring not merely to human intentions but to something wider. It is then a question for the philosophy or theology of history: ‘What are God’s purposes?’

3. One of the (human) purposes in writing ‘Scripture’ is to express, as far as one can, one’s beliefs about these Divine purposes. The stories of the Exodus, or of the kings of Israel and Judah, for instance, are told in the way they are told not simply to describe what happened, but also to explain why it happened in the broader sense.

4. The task of the exegete is, to start with, to determine what the author is trying to convey. Here he is like the historian who is trying to determine ‘what happened’. However, there is a further task that the exegete may or may not undertake, or even believe in, which may be expressed as follows.

5. If Scripture is (in whatever sense) ‘inspired’, ‘having God for its Author’ over and above the various human authors, we may ask whether God intends anything that transcends the intentions of those authors, and, if so, what? This task is like that of the philosopher or theologian of history: it is essentially a theological task, one that involves our understanding of God.

Medieval writers were not always clear about the distinction between ‘historical’ and ‘meta-historical’ questions on the one hand, or between ‘exegetical’ and (if I may coin the term) ‘meta-exegetical’ questions on the other; but broadly speaking I think they would have accepted the validity of these distinctions. The difficulty comes in applying them in practice. The broad lines of development of Christian Scriptural interpretation up to the Middle Ages are now well established, not least due to the work of Beryl Smalley. Christian methods of interpretation grew out of first-century Jewish methods. The technique of the ‘allegorization’ of the Scripture which Philo began was continued and developed by, for instance, Origen of Alexandria. As a Christian, Origen was concerned to safeguard the basic historicity of the Scriptures (above all the Gospels), but he distinguished four ways in which they might have further significance:

1) Christological: prophecies (in the Old Testament) of the coming of Christ;

2) Ecclesiological: prophecies of the Church and its Sacraments;

3) Eschatological: prophecies of the Last Things and of the world-to-come;

4) Moral: figures of the relationship between God and the individual soul.

The last two ways applied to the New Testament, as well as the Old. The Alexandrian School, as it came to be, was content to accept that some passages in Scripture had no ‘bodily’ meaning; but all had a ‘spiritual’ meaning. As Beryl Smalley puts it, ‘By no other means, at that time, could the taboos of primitive tribes, as described in the Law, have been spiritualized for the benefit of men who were hardly less primitive.’

A caveat: there is an ambiguity about taking the term ‘literal sense’ as meaning ‘what the text says’. The text says nothing; it is the author who says something in and through the text. The Fathers did not have the means to answer (or even raise) many of the questions modern exegetes ask about the ‘literal sense’- what the human author meant- but we can exaggerate their ‘literalism’. They knew how historians wrote in their own time, how they had to ‘reconstruct’ events from the traditions they had received, how they would, for instance, compose suitable speeches to express the intentions of historical figures as they believed them to have been. These were the conventions of historical writing.

At the root of Augustine’s influence on Antony is De doctrina christiana, which we mentioned in the previous chapter. This work was enormously influential throughout the Middle Ages. Antony twice quotes Augustine’s definition of ‘charity’ from this work, but a comparison between it and the Sermones shows that in the latter Antony was carrying out scrupulously the recommendations of Augustine.

De doctrina christiana is in four books, the first three on understanding the faith, the fourth on teaching it. It is, in fact, not a manual of Christian doctrine, rather a methodology for Christian education.

Of the first three books, the first is on ‘Things’ and the other two on ‘Signs’, or as we might say, on objective reality and the language we use to talk about it. ‘Things’ are divided into those we ‘enjoy’ and those we ‘use’. The latter are our means to the former: ‘To enjoy something is to cling to it with love for its own sake’, and the ultimate object of our love and joy is God. Sin arises when we get our priorities wrong, pursuing what ought to be a means as an end, and not as it leads to God. In all our study of Scripture we must remember that it is meant to arouse and increase our love and desire for God, and of everything else for his sake.

This ‘Augustinian’ approach was fundamental to Franciscan theology as we see it expressed in its greatest exponents, Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus. Love, rather than knowledge, was the keynote of Francis’ own life, the essence of the ‘Seraphic’ way (the Seraphim were regarded as the spirits of Love, par excellence, in distinction from the Cherubim who were characterised by knowledge, the predilection of the Dominican Order). Antony was not a systematic theologian after the pattern of those just mentioned, but his grasp of Augustinian methodology laid the foundations for Franciscan theology as it developed.

It in is the second book of De doctrina christiana that we see most clearly the particular influences that shape the Sermones. For Augustine, a sign is ‘a thing which causes us to think of something beyond the impression the thing itself makes upon our senses.’ Some signs are natural, some conventional- the latter are those which living creatures show to one another to manifest their thoughts and feelings. In particular, Holy Scripture is the sign whereby God (through human authors) conveys his message to us. The original Scriptures have been translated into many languages, and this both helps and impedes our understanding. We have to work to ensure we understand the true meaning intended by God. This requires a moral preparation, starting with the fear of the Lord and mounting through piety, knowledge, strength, mercy, and purity to wisdom.

Returning to our particular knowledge of the Scriptures, Augustine reminds his readers that the Canon of Scripture is established by the Church. Here is our field of study. Ideally, we should have a knowledge of the original languages in which the Scriptures were written. In practice, we must at least compare the various translations, and utilize the work of scholars regarding the precise meanings of words and expressions. Language can be used figuratively as well as literally, so to understand the force of the various similes, analogies etc. found in Scripture, we need knowledge of those things which form the basis of the similes- animals, plants, minerals, the natural world generally. We need to understand something of number and music, and to have some acquaintance with human institutions. This requires historical knowledge, and some grasp of human art and technology. Above all, we need to be able to reason correctly if we are to draw inferences from what we know.

Even a cursory glance at the Sermones reveals how conscientiously Antony follows all this advice. He constantly refers to Jerome and Isidore of Seville on philology, to Aristotle, Pliny and Solinus on Natural History, and so on. Augustine had warned,

Antony too laments, in his Prologue, the ‘insipida sapientia’ of his contemporaries which ‘legere fastidit’ what is not ‘polita, exquisita et novum quid resonantia’. That is why he includes ‘illustrations from physics and natural history, and explanations of words expounded from the standpoint of morality.’ Above all, Antony follows the Augustinian precept of interpreting Scripture by Scripture.

Even when every effort has been made to understand the meaning of the Scripture, some ambiguities will remain. This is particularly true of the figurative language. In Book III Augustine offers some advice, although it is limited in scope. First, any true interpretation must be subservient to the rule of charity- it must promote virtuous behaviour. But since the Author of Scripture is God, who foresees all possible interpretations, we can say that God’s intention includes all that can (saving charity) be legitimately derived from the text. Augustine makes a passing reference to particular linguistic forms- allegory, metaphor etc.- but does not pursue them in detail. The development of a fully-fledged ‘allegorical’ system of interpretation was the work of later writers, following the Alexandrians more closely than Augustine did.

We are not concerned in this thesis with giving a detailed survey of the evolution of medieval theories of allegory in Scripture, but only with it as it influenced Antony. After Augustine (in order of time, not necessarily of importance) was St Gregory. Whereas Augustine had emphasised the importance of linguistic and scientific knowledge in understanding figurative language, Gregory offered more precise guidance on how such language might be understood. Antony had a thorough acquaintance with the Moralia in Job, and from this work in particular we can see how the principles outlined earlier by the Alexandrians were developed towards their medieval form. In his prefatory letter to Bishop Leander, Gregory wrote:

A little further on he wrote:

But he warned:

The search for further meaning is justified on the assumption of divine authorship of the Scriptures. In the Preface proper, discussing the authorship of the Book of Job, Gregory wrote:

One might as well worry about what pen a human writer used, as about the identity of the human author of a sacred book.

Precisely how Gregory understood his principles must be learned from seeing how he applied them. ‘First we must plant the root of history, so as to satisfy the mind afterwards with the fruit of allegory.’ The first two books of the Moralia cover only the first chapter of Job. In each book, Gregory gives an historical exposition of the text first. Then he says: ‘We believe these things as historical facts: but now by allegory we must see how they are fulfilled.’ He returns to the beginning, and interprets Job as a type of Christ; his (former) house is the synagogue, whose four corners are the priests, scribes, elders and pharisees, and which is destroyed by the devil’s whirlwind. After this, he starts yet a third time from the beginning, interpreting Job as a type of every good man who suffers; the house of his soul should be built on the four virtues, prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice. ‘Holy Scripture as it were holds up a mirror to our mind’s eye, wherein we may see our inner countenance.’ The relation of the allegorical and moral senses is that, in the former, we apply the Scriptures to our Head; then, to build up his Body, we copy the pattern morally, so that what was done outwardly in Him we perform inwardly in our hearts. In fact, Gregory does not carry out this plan in its fulness beyond the first few books; then the literal sense is passed over more and more cursorily, and the allegorical and moral senses come to predominate. In this way, the Moralia differs considerably from a modern commentary on Job, and yet it is still anchored in the text, and never become a purely systematic treatment of mystical or moral topics.

The Gregorian tradition was developed considerably by the Victorines. I suggested in Chapter I. that Antony’s debt to the Victorine tradition was not as great as some (Châtillon, for instance) have supposed. This may be an appropriate point to give some reasons for this suggestion. Scholars such as Beryl Smalley have made much of the fact that Hugh of St Victor and his disciples were much concerned with the literal sense of Scripture, as opposed to the allegorical interpretations favoured by many of their predecessors and contemporaries. In his Sermones, Antony shows very little interest in the literal sense, and this alone should give us pause before suggesting a strong Victorine influence upon his thought. However, it is worth examining Hugh’s development of the Gregorian tradition in a little more detail. In his De scripturis, Hugh begins his treatment of the interpretation of Scripture by distinguishing three ways in which it may be understood:

He gives the example of Job: historically, a rich man brought low; allegorically, Christ coming down to share our misery; and when we ask what we are to do, Job is the penitent weeping for his sins. Hugh clearly uses ‘anagoge’ here to indicate ‘moral’:

He then goes on to say that we cannot apply this three-fold method to every passage:

Here Hugh uses the term ‘tropologia’ instead of ‘anagoge’; but he evidently means the same by each. He continues:

The distinction now seems to be between ‘spiritual’, ‘moral’ and ‘historical’ senses: not every passage deals with ‘history’, in the sense of describing events which have happened. Some only refer to spiritual or moral truths; but some can mean all three (or presumably, any two). It looks as if Hugh has been taking as his paradigm the narrative parts of Scripture, which tell of ostensibly historical events; however, there are other parts of Scripture (the Wisdom literature, or much of the prophets, for instance) which is not ‘historical’ in that way, but which give spiritual or ethical teaching. However, he realises that ‘historical’ is not the same as ‘literal’.

He is amazed at the ‘cheek’ of people who claim to be teachers of allegory, when they are ignorant of the primary, literal sense. Hugh seems to be making a new point: there is always a literal significance of the words, and any allegorical meanings must build upon that literal meaning.

The ‘literal meaning’ is a middle term between the words of the text, and the ‘spiritual meaning’. You cannot ‘jump’ over it. You must carefully compare the ‘face meaning’ of the text with the ‘mystical meaning’ pertaining to faith or morals. The literal sense is the means whereby the Holy Spirit conveys spiritual truths to minds that are dependent upon the bodily senses. If we were able to by-pass it, most of the imagery of Scripture would be quite pointless. He concludes this argument:

Later in the treatise Hugh gives some principles for deriving inner significance from outward meaning. He distinguishes ‘sounds’ (voces) from ‘meaning’ (significatio).

The meaning of ‘sounds’ is dependent upon human conventions; but the significance of ‘things’ derives from the will of the Creator. It is therefore much wider. Few words may have more than two or three meanings, but things have a multiple significance, deriving from their many different properties. He considers ‘things’, with their sensible qualities; ‘persons’, with their social relationships; ‘numbers’ (devoting a whole chapter to their meanings); ‘place’; ‘time’; and ‘action’ (gestum).

Although Hugh begins with some apparent confusion between ‘historical’ and ‘literal’, it soon becomes clear what he means. The text has a literal meaning (intended by the human author). It is upon this meaning that further meanings (intended by God) are built. If the further meaning is a ‘fact’ (a truth of faith), we have allegory; if it refers to what we ought to do, we have morality. Hugh does not suggest that the literal meaning is more important than the others; only that we cannot reach the others without it: it is in that sense fundamental.

Whether Antony had read Hugh’s De scripturis, or his Didascalicon in which he makes similar points, is doubtful. He certainly did not follow Hugh in concerning himself overmuch with the ‘literal’ sense of the Scriptures in his Sermones; on the other hand, his allegorical and moral comments do grow naturally out of the literal sense, and in no way seek to ‘by-pass’ it. However, he does prefer (in theory) a fourfold division of senses (literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical) in which ‘anagoge’ is not the same as ‘morality, and the term ‘tropological’ is not used at all. This does not suggest that he bases himself on Hugh, even if he did know his work. One work he almost certainly did know, however, was Hugh’s De institutione novitiorum, which was used at São Vicente. Here Hugh advises novices:

This advice Antony certainly followed wholeheartedly.

 3.5 Antony

Both Gregory and Hugh envisage a three-fold manner of understanding Scripture: the literal interpretation, and two ‘non-literal’ senses, one concerned with the truths of faith (allegory), and the other with human moral activity (‘tropology’, or ‘anagoge’). However, the number of senses varies with different authors. Beryl Smalley notes that Angelom of Luxeuil discovered no less than seven senses in parts of the Bible. By Antony’s time four senses seem to have been widely distinguished, the three mentioned above, and an ‘anagogic’ sense that related to the Last Things (a sense of the term that went back at least to Cassian). For instance, Guibert of Nogent says,

This analogy of the chariot or waggon with four wheels seems to have been wide-spread. It appears also in Chobham:

He connects these four means of understanding with the four powers of the soul: by sense we attend to history; by reason we comprehend tropology, the moral sense; by understanding we take note of allegory, signifying the Church and its members; by wisdom we consider anagogy, the heavenly love of God and things above.

Antony certainly prefers the four-fold division, here departing from his mentor Gregory, but he has his own metaphor, of a more organic character:

Elsewhere, in considering the text of Proverbs: He that strongly squeezeth the paps to bring out milk straineth out butter; and he that draineth violently bringeth out blood (Prov 30.33), Antony says:

This passage appears in only one manuscript; but Antony certainly continues by interpreting the ‘paps’ as the Old and New Testaments, the ‘milk’ as allegory, and the ‘butter’ as morality. The ‘blood’ is then interpreted as sorrow leading to tears, suggesting that anagoge has at this point been forgotten, and Antony is more concerned with the idea of moral teaching leading to compunction and repentance. He goes on:

in other words, his life must be in accord with his knowledge.

This last sentence is the passage allegedly deriving from Guibert, which we considered in the last Chapter. Here too Antony seems to envisage only ‘history’, ‘allegory’ and ‘morality’; he was evidently not wholly committed to a four-fold division, although when it suits him he occasionally offers an ‘anagogic’ interpretation. Antony’s preference for morality is nevertheless clear.

The finding of allegories was not a matter for the arbitrary taste of preachers: there were recognised rules and conventions. For instance, the Patrologia Latina contains a work entitled: Allegoriae in universam sacram Scripturam, which Migne attributed to Rabanus Maurus, although it is now thought to be by the Cistercian Garnier de Rochefort. The author begins by saying, ‘whoever wants to gain knowledge of holy Scripture must first consider carefully when it is speaking historically, when allegorically, when anagogically and when tropologically.’ He calls these four ways of understanding, the ‘daughters of mother Wisdom’. Through them, mother Wisdom feeds her adopted children, giving the ‘milk’ of history to those young and inexperienced, the ‘bread’ of allegory to those making progress in faith, the ‘savoury meat’ of tropology to those making great efforts and sweating in good works; and, finally, with the ‘wine’ of anagogy, she gives a ‘sober inebriation’ to those who despise earthly things and seek to rise above by the desire of what is heavenly.

History is just telling what happened. It is the superficial meaning of the words, and we understand it as we read it. Allegory contains something more; it imparts the truths of faith, the mysteries of holy Church- whether present or future. One thing is said, another is meant, so that truth is expressed by figures, in a veiled way. Tropology is much the same, but here the words or facts build up moral life, rather than faith. Anagogy, whether veiled or open, is to do with the joys of our heavenly home, and the rewards awaiting right faith and right living.

History, by telling the stories of the perfect, stirs the reader to imitate their holiness; allegory, by revealing the faith, moves to knowledge of the truth; tropology teaches us to love virtue in our moral lives; anagogy manifests heavenly joys and makes us desire them. In the house of our soul, history lays the foundations, allegory raises the walls and anagogy puts on the roof; while tropology decorates the building by inner affections, and outwardly by good deeds.

The author goes on to consider when texts should be understood in only one sense, and when in two, three or all four. He notes that the same word or figure does not always have the same meaning, in every context- for instance, the water that is said to flow from the heart of a believer is not the same as that which the Psalmist prays will not overwhelm him; nor is the victorious lion of the tribe of Judah the one that goes round seeking whom he may devour! In general, one must examine the context, the natural qualities of things, the Hebrew or Greek etymology, and so on.

The main part of the work is an extensive (almost exhaustive) list of figures, how they are used and what they mean: there are over seventy under the letter ‘A’, for instance, including ‘angel’, ‘abyss’, ‘abies’ (fir-tree), ‘accipiter’ (hawk), ‘acetum’ (vinegar) and so on. What is clear is that for the author, ‘allegorization’ was not arbitrary or fanciful. It rested on clear principles, and there were accepted conventions regarding individual cases. In a very basic sense, it was ‘scientific’ in the sense of a clear and systematic method, resting on principles and the scholarship of earlier writers; and if Antony did not know and use this work, he evidently used something similar.

Copyright in this dissertation belongs to the author, S.R.P.Spilsbury