In this chapter we will first survey, in as comprehensive a way as space permits, the various contexts in which Antony uses his terminology of ‘concordance’; and then we will attempt (however tentatively) to draw some conclusions about the underlying principles and purpose of his method.

Before examining his usage in extenso, there is a particular passage in the Sermon for Pentecost XI which illustrates both the technical and non-technical use of the word. Antony is considering the Gospel story of the pharisee and the publican. The publican stood far off and would not lift up his eyes to heaven; he beat his breast and asked for mercy. After discussing these physical expressions of penitence, Antony remarks:

To be ‘concordant’ is to be ‘of one heart’. As well as being an example of his method, this passage also gives us a clue to the rationale of that method. In comparing passages, Antony sought a unity of ‘heart’ in them. We need to bear in mind that, since medieval knowledge of anatomy and biology was undeveloped in comparison with our own, the associations of certain words were different then too. The heart was not regarded as simply the source of emotion and feeling, as we now figuratively contrast ‘heart’ and ‘head’. That was associated more with the liver, leading to what we feel to be some incongruity in the over-literal translation of some texts! The heart was the seat of ‘understanding’, so that what Antony looked for was a unity of inner meaning, based on the conviction that all parts of Scripture were expressions of God’s self-revelation. We should recall what has been referred to earlier, that Antony was less interested in the logical and metaphysical developments and discoveries being made at Paris and Oxford, for instance, than in the moral and spiritual application of Biblical truth to the lives of ordinary believers. His method of ‘concordance’ does have its own inner logic, but we shall discover it best by observing it as he developed it, rather than by trying to fit it in to the categories of the Aristotelianism which so signally influenced other twelfth and thirteenth century writers. It is only by familiarity with an author’s writings that one can hope to gain an insight into the way his or her mind works. Accordingly, we must now look in some detail at the way Antony employs his method.

Before going further, it will be useful to give a detailed analysis of a complete ‘sermo’, in order to identify the various constituent elements, and how they relate to one another. I shall take the sermon for the first Sunday after Pentecost, because, as I pointed out earlier, this marks the beginning of a new phase in Antony’s handling of his material. The twenty-four Sundays after Pentecost form a distinct and consistent group which exemplify Antony’s methodology very clearly, and the first of the sequence exhibits virtually all the features which we need to consider.

The general structure of each sermon clause, then, is this:

1. Statement of Gospel text (usually introduced by Dicamus ergo or sequitur).

2. Statement of Auxiliary text possibly with identification of key elements (often introduced by, e.g., nota ista [tria], or quid significant [ista] videamus), and interpretation.

3. Statement of Concordance, usually with identification of key elements, and interpretation, as for above.

4. (Reference to Introit, possibly noted as concordant)

5. Reference to part of Epistle as concordant with current clause of Gospel; general comment.

[1, 2, and 3 may be repeated]

 6.3 The Introits

In making a detailed analysis of Antony’s use of ‘concordance’ I shall concentrate mainly on the sermons for the twenty-four Sundays after Pentecost, as giving the fullest and best examples.

I shall begin with the Introits, since there are fewer explicit examples of concordance among them, and we can compare them with those other cases which are not so termed. The ‘Introit’ is the antiphon to the psalm sung at the beginning of Mass, at the entrance of the clergy. Even when the psalm is reduced to a single verse, with Gloria, the antiphon is sung before and after it, setting the tone for the whole celebration. Often, but by no means always, it is taken from the entry-psalm itself, and expresses praise of God, or a plea for mercy. It is not particularly related to the themes of the readings.

We may ask whether we can see a difference between cases where Antony calls the Introit ‘concordant’ with one or other of the readings, and those where he does not. There are only seven of the former in the texts we are considering:

Since there are so few examples, we will look at each in turn.

1. The Gospel contains the words ‘Give, and it shall be given unto you’ (Lk 6.38). Antony suggests a concordance to this in 2Kg(Sm) 17.27-29, where David and his companions are brought gifts by Berzellai and others. Later (19.33), David says to Berzellai, ‘Come with me that thou mayest rest secure in Jerusalem.’ It is this verse to which the Introit, ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? My enemies that trouble me have themselves been weakened and have fallen.’ (Ps 26.1-2), is said to be concordant. The basis of the concordance consists in the four words ‘come’, ‘rest’, ‘secure’ and ‘Jerusalem’. No-one can ‘come’ to the Lord unless he is first enlightened, while ‘rest’ comes from salvation. The Lord’s protection gives ‘security’, and when we are in the heavenly Jerusalem we shall not fear the enemies who trouble us now. Some of this may seem a little forced, but there is an underlying connection, in that the behaviour of David to his benefactor does exemplify ‘Give, and it shall be given to you’; while David’s invitation to accompany him and find security in Jerusalem is parallel to Christ’s invitation to the soul, to which the Introit is a fitting response.

2. The Introit is ‘We have received thy mercy in the midst of thy temple, O God’ (Ps 47.10). This is linked by Antony to the opening words of the Gospel, ‘I have pity upon the multitude’ (Mk 8.2). He comments: ‘De cuius misericordia optime habes concordantiam in introitu hodiernae missae’, but does not continue with the theme of mercy, preferring to explain the word ‘temple’.

3. The Gospel includes the words: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’ (Lk 19.46). The Introit comes from Ps 67.6-7,36: ‘God is in his holy place: God who maketh men of one manner to dwell in a house: he will give power and strength to his people.’ Here, God’s ‘house’ and his ‘place’ are evidently the same; and in a moral interpretation they represent the mind or soul of the righteous, as the dwelling-place of God. Antony quotes Ezekiel’s vision (Ezek 3.12), ‘I heard behind me the voice of a great commotion, saying, Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place.’ This ‘commotion’ is contrition, the repentance by which we are made God’s dwelling-place, and enabled to bless and glorify him. As God’s dwelling-place, his house, our powers and faculties are made tro dwell in harmony, with our sensuality subject to reason and our reason to God. God gives his people virtue so that they do not become too elated in prosperity, and fortitude so that they are not downcast in adversity. ‘He giveth strength to the weary, and increaseth force and might to them that are not’ (Is 40.29). Thus the Gospel and the Introit equally evoke the idea of the soul as the Temple of God.

4. The Gospel is, ‘Blessed are the eyes which see what you see...’ (Lk 10.23), and the Introit is ‘Behold, O God our protector, and look on the face of thy Christ. For better is one day in thy courts above thousands’ (Ps 83.10-11). The basis for the concordance is the face of Christ. That is what the disciples are blessed in seeing, even when it was bruised in the Passion; and when we call upon God for protection, it is in virtue of Christ’s redeeming suffering, which we ask God to look upon rather than upon our sins.

5. The Introit is treated in the context of the second clause of the Gospel, ‘Consider the birds of the air’ (Mt 6.26), but it is referred not to that, but to part of the Book of Tobit read at Matins (Tob 3.1-2,6; 3.13,21-23). The Introit is, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I have cried to thee all the day; for thou, O Lord, art sweet and mild, and plenteous in mercy to all that call upon thee’ (Ps 85.3,5). The general sense of these words is obviously in accord with the fervent prayers of Tobias and Sarah in their trials.

6. The Introit is based on a text of Ecclesiasticus (36.18), slightly altered: ‘Give peace, Lord, to them that patiently wait for thee; that thy prophets may be found faithful. Hear the prayers of thy servants and of thy people Israel.’ This is echoed in the Epistle (Eph 4.1), where St Paul asks his readers to support one another patiently in charity; while the prayer for peace echoes that at the beginning of 2 Maccabees (the Old Testament reading), that God may send peace to the Jews in Egypt and Palestine. The concordance, then, is based on the words ‘patience’ and ‘peace’.

7. The final concordance is between the lord in the parable of the unforgiving servant, who, ‘being moved with pity, let him go and forgave him his debt’ (Mt 18.27), and the words of Jeremiah in the Introit, ‘I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of affliction’ (Jer 29.11ff). The words, ‘You shall call upon me and I will hear you; and I will bring back your captivity,’ express the same sequence as in the Gospel: the servant prays, is heard, and is set free. The words sung in the Introit help the believer to identify himself with the servant in the Gospel.

Although the term ‘concordance’ is only used in these seven cases, the Introit is actually referred to in every one of the twenty-four Sundays except the last, which has no proper Introit but re-uses the preceding one. In each case the Introit is related briefly to one or other of the readings (for instance, on Pentecost IX the Introit is interpreted as a prayer of the Church against bad prelates who waste the Lord’s goods like the wicked steward in the Gospel). There seems no obvious reason why these too should not be termed ‘concordance’; in other words, the method is constant, even though Antony varies the way in which he introduces the Introit. The basis for the concordance is sometimes verbal- a coincidence of words- and sometimes an underlying harmony of ideas. Because the Introit is so short, and is generally an expression of praise or penitence, it requires no great ingenuity to work it in somewhere in any sermon, or on any Gospel.

In the Sermons for the Sundays after Pentecost there are sixty-seven Gospel clausulae, and in all but two of them the Epistle concordance is introduced by the formula: ‘huic primae (secundae, tertiae..) clausulae concordat prima (secunda, tertia..) particulae epistolae’. The exceptions are found in the first clause of the Gospel for Pentecost XII, where Antony writes merely: ‘si ergo cum Iesu de finibus Tyri exieris... cum beato Paulo in hodierna epistola dicere poteris...’ ; and in the Gospel for Pentecost XVIII, where Antony treats only the second clause, and introduces the Epistle with the words: ‘in epistola hodierna sunt tria istis concordantia’, where ‘istis’ refers to the parts of the Introit, not the Gospel.

The Epistles give us far more data than the Introits, in that not only is every Epistle explicitly concorded with its Gospel, but (with the two exceptions noted above) every section of each Epistle is concorded with the corresponding clause of the Gospel. This suggests that considerable artificiality is likely in the detailed comparisons between texts; and this likelihood is increased when we remember that, in Antony’s time, there were a number of lectionary-schemes in use, and even though these were broadly similar, the correspondence of Epistles and Gospels could vary- an easy way for a modern reader to appreciate this is to compare the sequence of Epistles and Gospels in the Book of Common Prayer (based on the Gallican lectionary) on the one hand, with that of the post-Tridentine Roman Missal on the other. Antony must have realised that the connection between the two readings was not always planned and chosen by the Church; if there had once been such a plan, it had been distorted over the years. Given his overall intention to relate the Epistles to the Gospels, the only flexibility he could allow himself was in the precise places where he divided the readings.

The themes of the Gospels and Epistles in the time after Pentecost are as follows:

The Gospel themes begin with ideas of judgement, but pass to an outline of Jesus’ teaching and ministry, roughly following the order in the Gospels, starting in Galilee and ending near Jerusalem. The sequence of the Epistles, on the other hand, with only minor deviations, is simply according to the order in which they appear in the New Testament. This in itself suggests no great concern to link the two readings thematically.

To judge how successfully Antony concorded the Epistles with the Gospels, we must take each case in turn. It would be tedious to treat all sixty-seven instances here, a few examples must suffice. For instance, on the first Sunday after Pentecost, the Gospel is that of Dives and Lazarus. The Epistle is from 1 John on ‘God is love’. In treating the first clause, Antony follows Augustine in seeing the right order of love as being God, our soul, our neighbour and our body. The rich man put the last first, and that is why he was damned. The treatment of the other clauses is briefer, but quite succesful in contrasting John’s words on confidence in the day of judgement with the respective fates of Dives and Lazarus; John’s words on fear and love with their characters; and his question on how we can love the invisible God without love for our visible neighbour with Dives’ worldly concern for his brothers.

On the second Sunday after Pentecost, the Epistle is from an earlier part of 1 John, but the Gospel is that of the great supper. Again, Antony finds it easy to relate the idea of love to that of preparation for the heavenly Banquet. The excuses offered by the guests, the farm, the yoke of oxen and the wife, are related to the ways in which we fail in love of God, soul and neighbour, by pride, worldliness and lust. Our concern should be for those poor and outcast who were invited to fill the places of those who refused to come.

However, on Pentecost V the connection of Epistle to Gospel seems superficial: Jesus preaches from Peter’s boat, and Peter himself gives good advice in his Epistle. It is the Apostle himself, rather than his precise words, that provides the link. On Pentecost XVI and XVIII, the links between the stories of the raising of the widow’s son and the healing of the dropsical man on the one hand, and passages from Ephesians on Christian discipleship on the other, appear quite tenuous.

As with the Introits, sometimes Antony bases his ‘concordance’ on a verbal coincidence, sometimes on a convergence of theme. Anyone who has tried to preach on the Sunday Mass readings will know the difficulties of ‘bringing in’ the Epistle when dealing with the Gospel, and vice versa. It is not surprising that often Antony refers to the Epistle in very cursory fashion. That he felt obliged to do so at all, and never simply to pass it over, reinforces my view that the whole work was intended to give preachable material to his fellow friars, and at least to remind them of the liturgical texts from which they might draw inspiration. Introits and Epistles were ‘set texts’, admitting no discretion or choice; it is with Antony’s use of the Old Testament that we see the full flowering and flexibility of his method.

The Old Testament contains many different types of literature- narrative, exhortation, psalmody etc. According to his chosen method, Antony draws concordances from the currently read book of the Bible. To understand the underlying principles of the method, we need to consider samples of concordance drawn from different kinds of book. In this section I will take examples from historical narrative, wisdom literature, and prophecy. During the first eight weeks after Pentecost, the books of Kings were read at Matins; during August and September the readings are largely from Wisdom literature, including Job; and in October and November Maccabees and the prophets were read. I have selected clauses from three Sundays, one for each of these three divisions.

The Gospel text for the first clause is:

Antony first adduces a text from I Kings (Samuel) 22.2:

This is given only a brief exposition, enough to make the point that David is a type of Christ, receiving the outcasts of society. Antony then reverts to the Gospel text, and identifies his four key phrases (Nota ista quattuor): ‘drew near’, ‘to hear’, ‘receiveth’ and ‘eateth’. He refers these, by way of a moral application to the life of the penitent Christian, to contrition of heart by means of a ‘concordance’, drawn from the life of king David as recounted in the Office readings this week, the second book of Kings (or Samuel).

a) Regarding the first element, ‘drew near’, Antony offers this, from II Kings 5.1:

Those who are truly contrite and penitent, even now, should approach Christ as truly ‘our flesh and bone’, one of us who knows what it is to be human, and who suffered precisely so that we might be saved. We should flock to him (here is a ‘concordance of Nature’) as bees follow their monarch (Antony thought the principal bee was a ‘king bee’ rather than a queen).

b) Regarding the second element, ‘to hear’, we have II Kings 19.8:

With the help of a further text from Ezekiel 44, ‘This gate shall be shut... because the Lord God hath entered in by it’, Antony gives an allegorical interpretation whereby the ‘gate’ is Mary, and so ‘David sitting in the gate’ is a type of Christ, incarnate of Mary. The moral significance is then that penitents should approach Christ as Incarnate through Mary, in order (like the people of old) to hear his words and obey them. Antony makes no particular reference to confession of sins at this point: but we are presumably to understand this according to his earlier scheme.

c) Before the next concordance, Antony reminds us that it was the Pharisees who ‘murmured’ that Jesus ‘receives’ sinners, like David who, in II Kings 14.33, called Absalom, and

The tragic outcome of Absalom’s story is irrelevant at this point. All that matters is to see in him the way that Christ receives a sinner, and embraces him with love. The sinner may use the words of the Introit as an expression of his sorrow:

Confession and satisfaction are referred to at this point; but the goal is reconciliation which is initiated by the loving Father.

d) Finally, in this clause, regarding Jesus ‘eating’ with sinners, we have a parallel in II Kings 9:

David’s kindness to the crippled son of Jonathan, counting him as one of his own sons and sharing his table with him, is a type of Christ, who promised his disciples that they would eat and drink at his table in the kingdom of heaven.

The only other matters to be included in the clause are a brief reference to the first part of the Epistle, ‘wherein Peter speaks to converted sinners’, enjoining humility as a prelude to being lifted up by God, and the closing prayer: ‘Dear brothers, let us ask our Lord Jesus Christ to make us sinners draw near to him and hear him; graciously to receive us, and feed us with him at the table of eternal life. May he grant this, who is blessed for ever. Amen.’

The prayer in fact underlines Antony’s moral purpose: the historical facts about Jesus’ ministry and David’s reign are juxtaposed in order that their relevance and application to the life of the contemporary Christian may be more clearly perceived. However interesting the historical facts in themselves ( the ‘literal’ or ‘historical’ sense of Scripture), they have no existential significance unless they shed light on the contemporary situation of the believer.

During September, the book of Job was read. We saw earlier the influence of Gregory on Antony, and Gregory’s Moralia in Iob are often used by Antony, and are particularly important here. The Gospel text, which is in a sense only a rubric introducing the story of the healing of the ten lepers, is:

This is not the only Gospel in which Antony gives prominence to a short sentence referring to Jesus travelling. ‘All the words in this section are worth noting’, he says; in particular, the words ‘Samaria’, ‘Galilee’ and ‘Jerusalem’. He interprets these as ‘guard’, ‘passing through’ and ‘vision of peace’, respectively. He offers two short passages from Job (neither of them referred to as a concordance) to illustrate how Job ‘passed through Samaria and Galilee’ by keeping watch over his life. He then offers a rather longer passage (Job 22.23-28) as a concordance to Samaria, Galilee and Jerusalem (the speech belongs to Eliphaz, rather than to Job himself):

Antony comments on this passage more or less line by line. The sinner must return to God, if he is to be ‘rebuilt’. Several texts from Isaiah and Zechariah help to fill out the picture of the rebuilding of the temple: the body is the tabernacle of the soul, the mind is the tabernacle of thought: both mind and body need purification, which result from return to God. The words ‘earth’, ‘flint’ and ‘gold’ are then related to ‘Samaria’, ‘Galilee’ and ‘Jerusalem’. Job suggests a progression: flint replaces earth, gold replaces flint. The earth is stable, and suggests the stability that comes from keeping the commandments. But the Latin ‘terra’ has the meaning ‘land’, as well as ‘earth’, and Antony brings in a further text of Job:

The bread of heavenly nourishment grows from the land, or earth, of keeping the commandments: but in the world as it is, this has been overturned. Antony digresses to a topic which frequently occurs in his writings, the shortcomings of the clergy and religious of his own day. These are the ‘place’ of the Lord’s commandments, where above all they should be seen to be kept; but the fire of lust and avarice, envy and pride, has overturned them. Sky-blue sapphires, reminders of heaven, are become stones; gold has become ‘clods’. (Antony seems to be reversing the obvious sense of Job, in the interest of his point: The devil has made clergy and religious from vessels of honour to be so much rubbish! He adds (with an air of satisfaction at getting this off his chest) ‘But with these dismissed to the rubbish-tip, let us return to our subject!’

‘Flint’, a hard stone from which sparks can be struck, stands for constancy in virtue. Antony develops this idea with the help of further texts from Ezekiel and Job, including Job 39.27-29:

This is the second ‘concordance’, linked to the preceding by the word ‘flint’, but enabling Antony, with a further ‘concordance of Nature’ on the habits of the eagle (which was supposed among other things to gather amethysts, which had the power of driving serpents away from its nest), to introduce the idea of the saints soaring heavenwards with eyes gazing on the sun, the brightness of the divine splendour.

In this clause, Antony is not so much commenting on the Gospel text as such, as using it as a peg on which to hang an exposition of the Christian life as progress and pilgrimage. Jesus goes via Samaria and Galilee to Jerusalem; the Christian goes by way of keeping the commandments and growing in virtue, to the beatific Vision of Peace. He begins with the solid (but dull) business of earth (the commandments), but makes his nest on the flinty crags of virtue, until soaring heavenwards like an eagle. The images of a journey, of increasingly precious minerals, and of the eagle are ‘concordant’ or harmonious, because together they illuminate the soul’s ascent to God. The Epistle, referring to ‘walking in the spirit’, is a post-script to this, along with a further brief concordance from Job: The life of man upon earth is a warfare. The prayer is: ‘We beg you, Lord Jesus Christ, to make us pass through Samaria by keeping your commandments, and through Galilee by being constant in virtue. So may we reach Jerusalem and be found fit to drink of its golden torrent.’

In our two previous examples, the Gospel clauses were very brief, little more than introductory scene-setting for the main part of the story, the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin in Pentecost III, the healing of the ten lepers in Pentecost XIV. In this third example, the Gospel clause consists of a longer narrative, the story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter. This story is interrupted by the story of the woman with the haemorrhage, which is treated in the second clause. Antony announces from the start that both these stories are to be taken as types of the soul’s restoration from the state of sin. We are therefore again dealing with the ‘moral sense’ of Scripture. Five ‘concordances’ are offered in the first clause, but they are secondary to the development of the Gospel interpretation itself. Jairus (meaning ‘enlightened’) represents the Christian, enlightened by God and giving light in turn to those around. A text from Zephaniah helps to develop the idea of ‘four lamps’: God’s word, good deeds, good intention, and Christ’s humanity. Like Jairus, the Christian rules the synagogue of his unruly bodily senses. His ‘daughter’ is his own soul, lying dead through consent to sin, in the house of conscience. The Christian must approach Jesus, and ask him to extend the hand of grace, whereby the soul may be contrite and so be restored to life.

In expounding the role of Jesus in the story, Antony gives his first concordance, Zechariah’s ‘man with a measuring line in his hand’. Jesus extending his hand, and the man measuring Jerusalem, both indicate God’s complete knowledge of us, and the way he makes us know ourselves.

Jesus rises and goes to Jairus’ house with his disciples, where he finds a noisy throng of mourners. This occasions a second concordance from Zechariah, regarding four ‘horns’ which scatter Juda and Israel and Jerusalem. Antony treats these not (as in the original) as horns of wild beasts, but as the musical horns of the mourners: pride and lust in the eyes, prurience in the ears, flattery and detraction in the tongue, robbery and usury in the hands. These sins blow away the laity (Juda), the clergy (Israel) and religious (Jerusalem). Again, Antony allows himself a digression on contemporary corruption in the Church, and has to recall himself to his main subject- ‘Redeamus ad materiam’.

Jairus is Everyman. He ought to rule his house, but it is full of unruly thoughts. When Jesus comes, he must first calm this noise and expel these distractions. He knows that the soul ‘sleeps’: while the Christian lives, the death of sin is not irreversible. When Jesus is alone with the soul he can raise her. Three concordances express the stages of Jesus’ activity. First, he expels the crowd- Hosea: ‘I will destroy the bow and the sword and war’. Then he takes the child’s hand- Zechariah: ‘The hands of Zorobabel have laid the foundations’. Finally, he raises her up- Micah: ‘I shall arise when I sit in darkness.’

The concordant Epistle refers to Paul’s prayer for his converts, that they may know God’s will. This prayer is answered when God draws the soul into the wilderness to speak to her: a further parallel to the idea of abstinence and quiet as a prelude to illumination.

The simplest sort of concordance is where one Old Testament text is compared to one Gospel text. For instance, in Pentecost XV, clause 1, Jesus says that no one can serve two masters, God and Mammon. Antony gives the example of Tobias, under kings Salmanasar and Sennacherib. The former looked kindly on him, and he prospered, whereas the latter sought to kill him. The two kings are thus ‘concordant’ with God and Mammon- God’s favour brings happiness, whereas Mammon brings destruction. An even simpler concordance (though with an Introit rather than a Gospel) occurs in Pentecost XV, clause 2, where the whole story of the Maccabees is said to be concordant with the sentiments, ‘I cried to the Lord and he heard me.’

Usually, the concordant passages are broken down into their key elements. For instance, in Pentecost I, clause 2, (analysed previously), we have Anna and Phenenna as concordant to Lazarus and Dives. Anna is barren, as Lazarus is destitute. Phenenna is fruitful, and Dives has many ‘children’- the works of the flesh (this is a reference to a legend that Phenenna’s children died when Anna’s were born). Phenenna treated Anna badly in four ways, and these are related to the ways in which the rich man oppressed Lazarus. While Anna wept and fasted, poor Lazarus starved because no-one would feed him. In this case, then, the parallels are drawn in some detail; and they clearly apply to the general relationship between the rich and the poor, between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’.

Another example of one-to-one correspondence is in Pentecost II, clause 1: Anna’s sacrifice as concordant to the ‘banquet’ of penitence. While the Gospel provides no details of the great supper prepared for the guests, the book of Kings does tell us what Anna provided. These details are related to the elements of true penitence, which the Gospel banquet represents. So, while Anna suckles Samuel, until he can be removed from the milk, grace nurtures the believer, to detach him from concupiscence. Anna brings three calves, representing confession, three bushels of flour, which stand for self-examination (sifting into smallest particles), and an amphora (three measures) of wine, which indicate cheerfulness of mind. So again, a number of detailed parallels are drawn, but with the ‘moral’ meaning of the banquet rather than directly with the details of the Gospel parable.

In other cases, a number of different Old Testament passages are cited to illustrate one Gospel text, although these may have a common element, such as David’s behaviour as concordant to Christ’s teaching, in Pentecost IV, clause 1. Here, David’s kindness to Mephiboseth is related to Christ’s words, ‘Be merciful, and you will receive mercy.’ Oza’s officiousness (his ‘judgementalism’) is compared with ‘Judge not, and you will not be judged.’ David’s refusal to condemn Absalom goes with ‘Condemn not, and you will not be condemned;’ David’s forgiveness of Semei with ‘Forgive, and you will be forgiven;’ and David’s generosity to Berzillai with ‘Give, and it will be given to you.’

In Pentecost V, clauses 1- 2, it is Solomon who is concordant to Christ: Solomon discourses on many things, while Jesus teaches; the two harlots come to Solomon, and there are two boats on the lake; Solomon’s fleet brings back treasure, and Jesus sails in the boat. Finally, the description of Solomon’s throne is related to Jesus sitting and teaching. Again, these passages are taken from different stories, but all relate to Solomon, the wise ruler.

In these cases, elements of one story are related to elements of another, or else with the ‘allegorical’ or ‘moral’ meaning of the other. Sometimes, a third story has to be brought in to clarify the elements involved. For instance, in Pentecost VII Antony wants to consider the siege of Samaria as concordant to the hunger of the crowd before the miraculous feeding. When Benadad besieged Samaria, there was famine, and the crowd following Jesus was hungry. But Kings provides no details, and so Antony turns to a parallel situation in Ecclesiastes, where a poor man saves his city. Many of the detailed comparisons are drawn between the second parallel passage and the Gospel, rather than directly from the ‘concordance’; however, the situations in the two Old Testament passages are very similar.

Another very simple example is from Pentecost IX, where a single word of the Gospel provides the foundation for a concordance which enables Antony to give several applications of the word. Jesus speaks of ‘this generation’, and the book of Proverbs speaks of four ‘generations’, which Antony gives an ecclesiological interpretation, as follows:

This illustrates the way in which short lists, common in Proverbs (‘there are three things, and a fourth’), lend themselves to this kind of concordance. In other cases, Antony is able to connect the individual items with distinct aspects of the Gospel text, as well as with his allegorical or moral interpretation. For instance, in discussing the prayer of the pharisee in Pentecost XI, clause 1, Antony cites ‘three hateful things’ concordant with characteristics of the pharisee, and also with the permanent enemies of the soul:

In another example, Antony succeeds in giving both a moral and an ecclesiological application, as well as a concordance with the Epistle. The Gospel for Pentecost IX is that of the unjust steward, who wasted his master’s goods. The Gospel is given a concrete application to contemporary abuses by means of a proverb which speaks of ‘four things that shake the earth’:

In Pentecost XV, clause 3, Jesus bids his followers, ‘Seek first the kingdom of heaven.’ Using a passage from Tobias, Antony takes Jerusalem as concordant with the kingdom of heaven, and the jewelled gates are given first an allegorical, then a moral, and finally an anagogic interpretation- one of the rare cases where Antony gives all three. The gates of Jerusalem are

Short proverbs are not the only passages from the Wisdom literature that Antony can break down and relate to New Testament parallels. In Pentecost X, the Gospel is Christ’s prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem. The long and picturesque passage beginning, ‘Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth’ (which Antony uses in several other places) is interpreted in terms of the life, aging and death of the individual man (the body being, as it were, the ‘city of the soul’). Thus, by implication, the Gospel words regarding the fate of Jerusalem are also given a moral application.

Again, in Pentecost XII, various passages are concordant with Christ’s journey from Tyre and Sidon to Galilee, in the region of Decapolis, which is taken as a moral allegory of ‘Everyman’s’ pilgrimage from the world to glory- a ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’. Two passages are taken from Ecclesiasticus. The first relates the ten likenesses of Simon the High Priest to the ‘Decapolis’, as representing ten virtues which should surround our penitential journey: the morning star, the full moon, the sun, the rainbow, spring roses, water-lilies, incense, gold, the budding olive and the lofty cypress. The second is concordant to the Epistle (‘Our sufficiency is from God’) taken as a summary of the spiritual life under the guise of five Scriptural rivers: Phison for beginners, Tigris for proficients, Euphrates for the perfect, Jordan for heavenly glory and Gehon for the vision of God. Taken together, we are presented with Christ’s journeying as representing our moral progress on earth. and (anagogically) as an image of our total spiritual journey from earth to heaven.

In some cases, the process of concordance is quite complex. In Pentecost XIII, Antony wants to find concordances in Job to Christ’s summary of the Law. Jesus said, ‘Do this, and live’. The three words indicate doctrine, life and glory, and there is a passage in Job where he says:

1) ‘The lamp of God shone over my head.’ The lamp is preaching, the head is the mind: here, then, we have ‘doctrine’.

2) ‘I washed my feet with butter.’ The feet are the affections of the heart, and butter is compunction of tears, so here we have ‘life’.

3) ‘The rock poured me out rivers of oil.’ The rock is Christ, and oil is the grace of the Holy Spirit, so here we have ‘glory’.

But Antony has not finished. Christ’s ‘this’ refers to the Law: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.’ This is concordant with the opening words of Job, ‘There was a man in the land of Hus’ (the word means ‘counsel’) ‘and that man was simple and upright, and fearing God, and avoiding evil.’ Four other passages from Job are brought in (Job 31.26-28, 8.5-7; Job 31.23; 11.14-19) to illustrate these four characteristics, and to relate them to the four phrases of the Law (‘all thy heart’, etc.)

A feature of Antony’s method is that he is quite willing to incorporate alternatives into his general scheme, either in respect to alternative derivations for words, or alternative literal interpretations of a text under discussion. This reinforces the view that Antony does not regard his concordances as expressing ‘the’ meaning of a text, but only as expressing one possible interpretation, without excluding others. In Pentecost XVIII, clause 2, he considers the text, ‘What think you of Christ? Whose son is he?’ (Mt 22.42). ‘Christ’ means ‘anointed’, and he proposes to take as a concordance the account in 1 Maccabees of the decoration of the Temple: ‘They adorned the front of the Temple with gold crowns, and dedicated an altar to the Lord.’ (1Mac 4.57). He suggests two derivations of the word ‘temple’, one connecting it with contemplation, the other (tectum amplum) with it being a large, roofed building. He invokes Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians, ‘The temple of God is holy, and you are that temple’, explaining that Christians are ‘temple’ if they are (1) contemplative, (2) ‘on the roof’, denying themselves like those who, on the day of judgement, should not come down to rescue their belongings (a reference to Mt 24.17), and (3) ‘ample’, overflowing both with contemplation of God and compassion for their neighbours. The front or ‘face’ of this temple is our works, by which we are recognised, and it should be adorned with the gold crowns of a pure intention. We dedicate an altar by giving our hearts, lifted high (alta) by love, and made a place of sacrifice (ara) by contrition, to God. In short, if we give our hearts to God with contrition and love, and if our works are done with pure intention, so that we overflow with compassion for our neighbour, with self-denial and with contemplation of God: then we are ‘Christs’, anointed with the balm of grace, and sons of David, strong-armed and fair of face (cf. 1Kg 16.12f)

Antony makes great use of etymology in order to fix the significance of the various elements of his parallel passages. For instance, in Pentecost XXI, clause 1, he considers the Gospel, ‘There was a certain ruler, whose son was sick at Capharnaum’. Capharnaum, according to Jerome, means ‘field of fatness’, or ‘farm of consolation’ (ager pinquedinis, or villa consolationis). The four words ‘field’, ‘fatness’, ‘farm’ and ‘consolation’ represent four states of life, or classes of people: clergy, religious, the poor, and the rich. From here, Antony moves to his concordance, the four ‘abominations’ of Ezekiel 8.5-16, which are concordant to these four states:

Those who commit these ‘abominations’ are ‘sick at Capharnaum’.

Sometimes, Antony seems to wander a long way from the original text. In Pentecost XXIII, clause 2, he is ostensibly discussing the coin of tribute: ‘Whose image and inscription is this? They replied, Caesar’s.’ He begins, conventionally enough, with the statement that the coin represents the soul, stamped with the image of the Trinity, and inscribed with the name of Christ. The concordance he chooses, however, is from Zechariah: ‘I looked, and, behold, a candlestick all of gold, and its lamp on the top of it: and the seven lights thereof upon it: and seven funnels for the lights that were upon the top thereof. And two olive trees over it: one upon the right side and the other upon the left side thereof.’ He says that the candlestick, like the coin, stands for the soul; while the lamp, like the image, stands for the grace of God which enlightens the soul. The seven lamps, he continues, represent the Beatitudes, while the seven funnels which feed them represent the seven words from the Cross:

Finally, the two olive trees are hope and fear, which keep grace alight, the hope of pardon on right, and fear of punishment on left. So, both coin and candlestick stand for the soul; either stamped with God’s image or alight with his grace; but the latter gives greater scope to elaborate the characteristics of the Christian life. It is the number seven which gives a mnemonic basis for the comparison..

I will give just one more example, showing how Antony at times interweaves a series of passages. On the last Sunday after Pentecost, in the prologue, he considers ‘Jesus talking to the crowds’. He cites Amos: ‘Israel, prepare to meet thy God. For behold, he that formeth the mountains and createth the wind and declareth his word to man, he that maketh the morning mist and walketh upon the high places of the earth: the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name.’ The mountains represent the angels, the wind human souls; the ‘word’ is the word of creation, and the cloud is the obscurity of faith; the ‘high places’ may be either virtues, or the saints. A good reminder of who this Jesus is, who talks to the crowds. But then Antony juxtaposes a second Old Testament text (which he specifies as a ‘concordance’), from 2 Kings: ‘When thou shalt hear the sound of one going in the tops of the pear-trees, then thou shalt join battle: for then will the Lord go out before thy face to strike the army of the Philistines.’ The context of this second passage is David seeking a sign regarding the advisability of attacking the enemy. Antony interprets the elements of this passage like this: pears are the same shape as flames (hence ‘pyri’, from the Greek ‘pyr’, fire), so they stand for the saints, aflame with charity. The ‘tops’ of the pear trees refers to the sublimity of their lives, while the ‘sound’ is the infusion of grace, and the ‘Philistines’ represent evil impulses, or evil spirits. The two passages reinforce one another. There is a double concordance; first, with Amos (the current Office reading, but not referred to as a ‘concordance’); and, second, with a passage from Kings (which is termed a ‘concordance’). Christ speaks to the crowds, God speaks his word to man as he walks on high. Probably the words ‘annuntians eloquium gradiens’ suggest ‘audieris sonitum gradientis’: those who ‘hear the sound of one going in the tops of the pear trees’, that is, who see the effect of God’s grace in the sublime lives of the saints, are those who, like the crowds, hear Jesus speaking and by following his teaching overcome their inward and outward enemies, thus ‘curing the issue of blood’ and ‘raising the dead’.

It is clear that ‘concordance’ is an important part of Antony’s exposition of the Gospels. But what, exactly, are Antony’s principles and purpose in using this method? This has to be teased out of an extensive and exhaustive study of the Sermones themselves, since Antony does not offer any theoretical justification. I offer the following tentative conclusions.

1. The difference between what I have called an ‘auxiliary text’ and a ‘concordance’ is merely that the latter is taken from the Office reading; whereas the former need not be, and on the whole is not.

2. The concordance of the Epistle (and Introit) with the Gospel is usually of a general character; whereas concordances from the Old Testament are chosen on the basis of some definite correspondence between elements of the chosen passage and elements of the Gospel text. This correspondence may be founded upon some etymological resemblance (the meaning of a name, for instance: e.g. Anna = grace) or on some natural or numerical symbolism (e.g. a spear stands for power; five brothers stand for five senses).

3. Both the elements of the Gospel text and the corresponding elements of the Old Testament text stand for a further reality (‘allegorical’ if it is of a Christological or ecclesiological nature; ‘moral’ if it has to do with the life of the individual person. These may be developed in separate parts of the Sermon.)

4. The ‘reality’ is related to text in a way that differs from the way the ‘literal’ or ‘historical’ meaning is related to the text. The text illuminates the reality, in the way that something concrete and familiar (the ‘literal’ or ‘historical’ meaning) may help in the understanding of what is abstract and unfamiliar (the allegorical or moral meaning). Gospel texts and their Old Testament ‘concordances’ have similar logical structures because they both illustrate the same allegorical or moral truths, rather than because they have an intrinsic relationship to one another. Whether or not these ‘concordances’ are part of the Divine meaning of Scripture (and in so far as they exist at all, they cannot fall outside the Divine intention), they are to a great extent at the discretion of the preacher.

5. The preacher uses them both to illuminate the spiritual and moral truths he is trying to convey; and to make them memorable: he uses them to help his hearers both to understand and to retain these truths. In that sense, they have both an exegetical and a homiletic purpose: to illuminate the truth, and to enable the hearer to grasp it.

6. It seems to me that one of the main purposes of both the Scriptural concordances and the ‘concordance of Nature’ was to counter the Cathar doctrine that the material world and the Old Testament were the work of ‘Satan’, in opposition to the True God from whom Jesus came. Nature, and the Scriptures of both Testaments, are in harmony; and it is by demonstrating this that Catharism must be opposed.

7. However, the method has more than a polemic purpose. The elaborate way in which Antony constructs the Sermones suggests that he saw it also as a help to preachers. The work of Mary Carruthers has opened up our understanding of mnemonic techniques in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and it is entirely probable that part of Antony’s intention was to make his points memorable to preachers, and, indirectly, to their audiences. For this reason, too, he based himself on a liturgical framework to give a commentary on the Gospels, and not simply on the Gospels as written.

8. But I think there was a further purpose. Antony’s approach provided a way of covering a whole range of Christian teachings, especially on the moral and spiritual life. It is not a speculative or theoretical work, such as those produced in Paris during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but it is in some measure intended as a comprehensive work. The employment of ‘concordances’ enables Antony to build a fuller treatment of a topic than the often slender Gospel foundation would allow by itself.

9. How does Antony select his concordances? He was renowned for his phenomenal memory, and this must go far to explain the wide range of selection. Unlike the written ‘Concordances’ that came into being soon after his time, and which are organised on mechanical, verbal lines, Antony seems to perceive more general and abstract patterns in the texts. He identifies key elements in, say, a Gospel text; and relates them to the (often very different) key-elements in an Old Testament text. It is the pattern, the relationship between the elements in each set, which provides the ‘concordance’. More importantly, both sets are related to non-literary realities: statements about Christ, or the Church, or the individual Christian. This is where Antony develops the traditional doctrine of the ‘senses’ of Scripture. The ‘literal’ or ‘historical’ sense, which was so important to the Victorines, is for Antony the ‘seed’ from which comes ‘first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn.’ The ‘blade’ is the allegorical sense, whereby the ‘letter’ gives rise to Christological teaching in a wide sense (it includes the Church and the Sacraments); then comes the ‘ear’, which relates all this to the moral and spiritual development of the believer, the ‘person in the pew’ so to speak, who is directly addressed by the preacher; finally, the ‘full corn’ is the anagogical sense, which looks beyond this life to the world to come. Antony sometimes treats Scripture in this sense, but more often allegorically, and most of all morally. These allegorical, moral and anagogical interpretations are not original to Antony, they are part of the tradition he has received, especially through writers such as Augustine and Gregory. In an important sense, then, the choice of ‘concordances’ is controlled by the Christological, moral or other doctrine he wishes to expound. If Christ’s journeying is to be taken as a type of the Christian progress in general, then texts will be chosen (limited by the discipline of confining the choice to the current liturgical readings) which help to express and develop that theme. In other words, the ‘concordance’ is related to the Gospel text, by a relationship of similarity, because both texts exemplify a pattern to be found in the ‘sense’ of Scripture under investigation. Antony presents a series of Scriptural images, of which the Gospel is the most important, which mediate truths about God and ourselves which should form and direct our lives. This is the preacher’s task and calling: to mediate God’s word to the believer, that he or she may be converted, may grow, and may finally be fulfilled.

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