William of Malmesbury. On Lamentations 2503548490, 9782503548494

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WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY On Lamentations

CORPVS CHRISTIANORVM IN TRANSLATION

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CORPVS CHRISTIANORVM Continuatio Mediaeualis 244

WILLELMI MELDVNENSIS MONACHI LIBER SVPER EXPLANATIONEM ­LAMENTATIONVM IEREMIAE PROPHETAE

CVRA ET STVDIO Michael WINTERBOTTOM ET Rodney M. THOMSON

OPITVLANTE Sigbjørn SØNNESYN

TURNHOUT

FHG

WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY On LAMENTATIONS

Introduction, translation and notes by Michael Winterbottom

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© 2013, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

D/2013/0095/40 ISBN 978-2-503-54849-4 Printed on acid-free paper.

Table of Contents

Preface

7

Introduction ‘I amused myself with histories’ ‘I am forty today’ ‘Something able to warn me off the world and set me on fire towards God’ ‘You have chosen for me the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah’ ‘You put in my way Paschasius Radbertus’ ‘Jeremiah’s words are to be understood in three ways’ Historical Allegorical Moral ‘Paschasius ... is unattractive, because he strove for what he regarded as verbal charm’ Scriptural citations Notes on the translation The reference system A note on the text

9 9 10

Bibliography List of Abbreviations Primary Sources Secondary Sources

24 24 24 30

Changes to the Latin Text of CC CM 244

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12 12 13 15 16 17 19 20 21 22 22 23

Table of Contents

William, monk of Meldunum, On the exposition of the Lamentations of Jeremiah Prologue Book One Book Two Book Three Book Four

35 41 172 231 317

Indices Index of Biblical References Index of non-Biblical Sources Index of Latin Words Index of Names Index of Subjects

369 378 380 382 388

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Preface

I wrote the first draft of this translation of William of Malmesbury’s Commentary on Lamentations in the course of my work on the Latin text that was published as Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medieualis 244. I translated the book, which had never been printed as a whole before, in the firm conviction that editors should, ideally, demonstrate to themselves that they understand (or at least think they understand) the work they are editing: it being part of their courtesy to their readers to print a text that makes sense. When the proposal to publish my rendering had been accepted for Corpus Christianorum in Translation, I undertook a careful revision of my draft. This gave me an invaluable opportunity to revisit the text too, and the errors I found, and the new emendations I made, are listed below (pp. 31-32). I am very conscious indeed that my translation remains imperfect. William wrote Latin whose baroque elegance and sometimes tortured obscurity can baffle even on repeated readings. Any reader of this book who cares to point out my errors to me will be doing me a service. I was blessed in this work, as in that on the Latin text, by the support of two ideal colleagues, whose names appear on the title page of the Latin text. Rod Thomson, with whom I have collaborated on William of Malmesbury for three decades, and a newer friend, Sigbjørn Sønnesyn, were once again always there to answer my questions (as did very promptly, on two occasions, Martin Goodman) and to suggest new approaches, as well as reading

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drafts of the whole. I could not have managed without them. The faults that remain are my own. I was blessed too in my publishers. Loes Diercken, and before her Eric Wierda, were my friendly contacts. When I asked them for advice and guidance, they gave it without delay and with no word wasted: professionalism at its best. I am also grateful to the anonymous reader of the sample I originally submitted to Brepols, for his or her wise comments; I wish that the same reader could have commented on my whole translation, of whose shortcomings I am well aware. Feci quod potui. November 2012

MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM Corpus Christi College, Oxford

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Introduction

‘I amused myself with histories’ Malmesbury (Wiltshire) is an ancient place. From an Iron Age hill fort in the English Cotswold hills between Oxford and Bristol developed a settlement that was for many centuries famous for its Benedictine abbey. Traditionally founded by an Irishman, Maeldubh, this house was especially notable in the late seventh century, when the great scholar Aldhelm was abbot. Æthelstan, king of England, was buried there in 939. The place’s flagging intellectual life gained new impetus after the Conquest, when the Norman Godfrey (abbot in the 1090s) restocked the library. He was assisted by the author of our commentary, William, a local boy of part-English, part Norman descent, who went on to spend his adult life in the abbey, serving as its precentor and librarian. Acquaintance with the long story of the house, and with its books, will have fostered William’s passion for history. He had been educated, we do not know where, to complete mastery of Latin. By the time he was thirty-five, it appears, he had read all the classical and patristic texts on which he could lay his hands: virtually all those, indeed, that were available in England at that date. Malmesbury had royal patronage. When William came to write his Gesta Regum Anglorum (History of the English Kings: GR) it was dedicated to King David of Scotland (acc. 1124); and, in his dedicatory letter, William tells us that the book owed its inception to the encouragement of the late Queen Matilda (d.

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Introduction

1118). In parallel with this William composed an equally ambitious work, the Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (History of the English Bishops: GP). These two substantial books, with which William continued to tinker even after their ‘publication’ around 1125, between them covered the political and religious history of England from the coming of the English to William’s day. Both display a remarkable ability to construct a lucid narrative out of a bewildering variety of sources, literary and documentary: a narrative made the more attractive by the elegant Latin and by often highly apposite classical borrowings that suggest William had total recall of the literary texts he had read.

‘I am forty today’ In his prologue to the commentary, William represents himself as having reached the age of forty ‘today’; and he connects with this birthday a determination to make a new start. He contrasts with his younger days, when ‘I amused myself with histories’,1 his embarking on ‘a different kind of work’, a sign of his resolve to live for his Maker, and no longer for himself. These words are less helpful in dating the writing of the commentary than we should wish. Authors do not commonly write a prologue before the rest of a work: William’s resolve will go back well before his birthday. What is more, we do not know the date of his birth: 1090 seems about the right time, but we cannot be sure. That would place the writing of the prologue to 1130, oddly near the historical works composed olim, ‘in the past’. Nor is it quite easy to know how to bring other books by William into the picture. They include the hagiography that produced surviving lives of Wulfstan and Dunstan, written appreciably after 1126. However historically William may have conceived them, they are still, surely, themselves ‘a different kind of work’ from the great histories that came before. Perhaps they, the book On the Antiquities of Glastonbury and the William speaks of the ‘charm’ of history, in order to contrast it more sharply with the ‘all-important’ things to which he is turning. 1 

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commentary are all fruits of a turning away from ‘pure’ history that took place around 1130. Indeed the commentary may well precede the hagiography, for it would be strange if its opening sentence meant to dismiss the saints’ lives as the products of a period in which William’s pen had been held in ‘the sheath of sloth’. It appears rather that he had written nothing at all since 1126 or so, and when he started composing again it was in a new direction. That conversion is in any case overstated. The earlier histories had not lacked moral import, and both gave much scope for the illustration of God’s purpose in the spread of Christianity throughout England. Equally, even the commentary, as we shall see, shows no lack of interest in history. The later book on the miracles of the Virgin Mary, too, shows the marks of an unregenerate historian. And William’s last work proved to be a return to his old manner. He laid down his pen in 1143 while narrating the troubles besetting the reign of King Stephen in the book we know as the Historia Novella. We cannot find in the commentary itself information that would help us solve the chronological problem. Indeed, if anything, the hints it does give serve to confuse the issue. William speaks (IV, 3, 1) of a royal ostrich: ‘we saw such a one in England in the time of King Henry.’ The phrase is not quite unambiguous. It seems to point to a period after the death of Henry in 1135 (and Robert of Cricklade happens to mention the book in 1137). Yet it could (just) be read as meaning: ‘We have seen in the time of the [present] king Henry’. And there are passages of the GR (notably 3 prol. 3) where the undoubtedly surviving Henry is spoken of, for the sake of posterity, as already deceased. Many gloomy but imprecise references to the present state of the English church do not help. Nor is the allusion in the prologue to ‘worsening circumstances’ clear in its reference. If we knew the work to have been written after 1135, we would naturally connect this remark with the troubles of Stephen’s reign.2 But William had a local worry. His abbey had been held by Roger, bishop of Salisbury, since c. So Farmer, 289, arguing for 1138 or later. Observe the remarks in I, 20, 8 on the dangers of being a friend of the king. 2 

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1118, and it would not be given an abbot again till after Roger’s death in 1139. William speaks darkly of the loss of the house’s freedoms in GP 79, 6: ‘Our plunderers oppress as well as rob us, leaving us no chance to give free expression to our woes’ (cf. GR 108, 3). That long-drawn out agony is one of the factors that we should bear in mind when reading William’s complaints in the commentary: Jerusalem captured, England conquered, Malmesbury plundered merge into one gloomy picture.

‘Something able to warn me off the world and set me on fire towards God’ William uses these words (Prol., 1) to characterise the ‘different kind of work’ that he now sets himself to produce. The commentary is written with himself much in mind. He aimed to rouse tears for sins (III, prol., 2), and those would be in particular his own tears and his own sins (cf. III, prol., 1).3

‘You have chosen for me the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah’ Considerations such as these will have made Lamentations, ‘a series of five poems mourning the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in 587 BC.’,4 an appropriate book for William to choose when he turned his mind to the quite new task of biblical commentary; and we do not need to take au pied de la lettre the statement in the prologue that a friend,5 presumably 3  The reader could look for any profit he might find (II, 3, 6, where see n.). Cf. II, prol. 1: ‘if not for others, for me assuredly meditations of this kind are a great incentive to the pursuit of good’ (also IV, prol. 1). William likes to end his comments on a verse (or group of verses) either with a prayer for himself (some were printed by Farmer, 307) or (as in a sermon) an exhortation to others. 4  Andrée (2005), 51 (from a most valuable section, 4. 1). 5  See also II, prol. 2. Friendship was enormously important to William, as that passage amongst others (e.g. I, 2, 6) shows.

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in his own monastery,6 had chosen this book for him. There is a marked air of commonplace, too, about William’s protestation of panic at entering the deep waters of ‘a book scarcely7 explained by any previous commentator’, and the information that his friend had thrown him a lifebelt in the shape of an earlier commentary by Paschasius Radbertus, abbot of Corbie (died c. 860). It is true enough, as William says, that the prolific Jerome had not touched on this book of the Bible. A short treatise did indeed circulate in the Middle Ages under Jerome’s name (PL 25, 787-792), but William seems not to have known it. He knew, but does not mention or much exploit, a longer commentary, preceding and drawn on by Paschasius: that of Rabanus Maurus, abbot of Fulda (d. 856), a voluminous writer for whom he had no high regard. Striking is William’s apparent lack of knowledge of contemporary work on Lamentations. Gilbert the Universal (bishop of London from 1127) included the book in his famous Glossa Ordinaria; and what Andrée calls ‘an explosion of Lamentations commentaries’ followed. So far as is at present known, William was not (and in many cases could not have been) aware of them, and they were not aware of him, unsurprisingly considering the apparently very restricted circulation of his book. William seems to have been part of a trend, without knowing it.

‘You put in my way Paschasius Radbertus’ William attributes to his unnamed friend the idea of abbreviating Paschasius’ commentary on Lamentations.8 This model was indeed lengthy. At first William considerably expands on it, devoting to Book 1 126 pages of CC CM 244 (40% of the whole

In III, prol. 3 he speaks of ‘brotherly love’ sustaining him; and ‘brothers’ are addressed in I, 18, 8 and IV, 1, 3. 7  This qualification allows room for some scattered comments on individual passages of Lamentations, e.g. by Gregory the Great, as well as for Rabanus Maurus. 8  For his own enthusiasm for brevity, see (besides Prol. 1) I, 4, 7; III, 7-9, 3. 6 

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volume)9 as compared with Paschasius’ 73 of CC CM 85 (22%). But he accelerates as he goes on, and increasing resemblance to his source is perhaps a sign of impatience to finish; his practice changes markedly from II, 7, 2 onwards. And by the time he comes to the end he has fallen short of Paschasius’ length, though not by a great deal (313 pages as opposed to 339).10 Paschasius’ commentary was always at William’s hand,11 and he takes over from it the traditional threefold manner of interpretation (see below). He also follows Paschasius in explaining the meaning of the Hebrew letters that head each verse, and the ‘connections’ that link them; the ultimate sources here are Jerome (Ep. 30) and (from III, 16-18, 7) Ambrose (In Ps. 118). These recurring elements give the work a firm, not to say constricting, structure. William, however, sets himself to improve on his model. Especially in the first half of the work, he shows off by choosing alternative biblical quotations, or adding further ones, and by deploying a wide range of patristic and classical material not mediated through Paschasius. The second apparatus of CC CM 244 gives an idea of the debt to Paschasius (for whose own sources Paulus’ apparatus can be consulted), but also of what William added to him; the present volume aims to give references to most of the biblical material, whether or not William took it over from his source, but only selects from the rest, adding some references missed in the text volume. A summary of his sources will be found in CC CM 244, pp. xiv-xvi; it is in turn summarised here. William quotes the Bible extensively, showing considerable facility in cross-referencing texts from one end of the scriptures to the other. When he quotes, he habitually appends ‘glosses’,12 often traceable to patristic commentaries, especially on the books See I, 22, 13 (‘on a more lavish scale than I had planned’). Paschasius divided his work into five books, corresponding to the five chapters of the text. William has only four, the fourth combining comment on Lam. cc. 4 and 5 (see IV, 22, 3). 11  He takes issue with him explicitly on a point of fact at V, 2-3, 1 (where see the note). 12  A counter-example: at I, 22, 2 he remarks that he has ‘multiplied’ biblical testimonia, but has not given their exposition. 9 

10 

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Introduction

most familiar to Benedictine monks: the Psalter (e.g. Ambrose, Augustine, Cassiodorus), Song of Songs (Apponius), the Prophets (Jerome) and the Gospels (Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome). He had access to a wide range of other patristic writings, certainly not all yet identified since he so rarely reproduces the exact wording of his source. Jerome and Augustine far surpass all others, but William drew freely on Ambrose and Gregory the Great.13 He also made use of early medieval sources up to his own time: Bede first and foremost, but also, for example, Isidore, Robert of Tombelaine (on Songs), Rupert of Deutz, and perhaps Anselm. There are doubtless further discoveries to be made, especially in the wide field of commentary in the Carolingian and post-Carolingian period. Much more unusual, and typical of William, is the addition of material, for ornament or instruction, from secular, especially classical, authors. Unsurprising are the poets: among them Vergil, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, Juvenal, and, later, Ausonius and Prudentius. For historical information he used above all Josephus, both as translated by Rufinus and in the version known as ‘Hegesippus’, and Rufinus’ translation of Eusebius. For moralising ‘philosophical’ reflection William drew on Cicero, Seneca, Apuleius (De Deo Socratis), and the Disticha Catonis.14 It is in his use of such a wide range of sources, especially the non-Christian ones, that William stands out from almost all other biblical commentators between late antiquity and the English friars of the fourteenth century.

‘Jeremiah’s words are to be understood in three ways’ William follows Paschasius in organising his commentary according to the traditional threefold division of scriptural interpretation (Prol., 5): ‘the historical, with respect to the Jewish nation; the 13  For William’s anthology from Gregory, preserved in a manuscript in Cambridge, see Farmer, 308-311. 14  See the Index of Sources; and note esp. I, 2, 3; I, 12, 14; I, 13, 10. Observe how comfortably biblical and classical texts sit together at III, 25-28, 9-10.

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allegorical, with respect to the church as a whole, and the moral, with respect to each and every individual soul.’ The three types are usually (but not always) employed in the commentary on each chapter; their order hardly ever varies. Sections that basically belong under one heading may touch on others, and I have come to the view that it would be confusing rather than helpful to try to signal the various modes. I discuss in turn the use to which William put these modes.

Historical The literal interpretation of the text. This normally comes at the head of the commentary on a verse; but history may be invoked elsewhere (thus in I, 2, 12 as part of the allegorical interpretation). Under this head may come comment on linguistic usage and figures of speech (e.g. I, 1, 2; I, 2, 2; I, 8, 2; IV, 7, 1). There are some allusions to rhetoric.15 Discussion of the meaning of the Hebrew letters attached to the verses in the Latin occurs regularly in the first and third books (for the second see II, prol., 2), though the position within the commentary on each verse varies. Events described or alluded to have a wide range. A remarkable summary of the conquerors of Jerusalem appears at III, 10-12, 1-2. Elsewhere we find details of a) the early history of Israel (e.g. I, 10, 2: ‘they remembered …’; II, 17, 1-2; II, 20, 2-3); b) the fall of the city (II, 5, 2) and the life of Jeremiah (III, 7-9, 1); c) the subsequent history of the city, especially its later destructions (II, 7, 1; III, 43-45, 3-4), right down to the time of Jerome (III, 64-66, 6; d) the fate of persecutors (III, 58-60, 5). Every reader will be stuck by the constant harping on the faults of the Jews.16 William’s distaste for them has roots in the church fathers, and is apparent in his historical works (see Thomson 15  William calls Lamentations ‘a long and continuous speech [oratio: hardly a prayer]’ at Prol. 4. For Jeremiah as proceeding like an orator see III, 58-60, 1; see also IV, 7, 3. 16  That did not mean that William did not feel for the fall of Jerusalem; for an especially eloquent passage see I, 21, 2.

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[1999], 280, with refs.; and for evidence from our work CC CM 244, xii with n. 20) and, not least, in his book on the miracles of the Virgin Mary. It is tempting to feel that this was one factor that made a commentary on Lamentations an attractive project for him, for it gave ample scope for the expression of his prejudice. William follows Jeremiah in believing that the Jews of his time paid for their sins by the loss of their city (e.g. I, 4, 1). But he felt that the Jews had deserved the execration they had suffered throughout history up to the present day (I, 17, 4 is a striking passage; see also II, 7, 1). They are seen as intent on profit in this life (I, 17, 2); as haters of Christ (II, 7, 1; III, 13-15, 4) and responsible for His death (II, 20, 4; III, 64-66, 2); as ‘brutal savages’ and even cannibals (II, 20, 4). In general, William likes to evoke dramatic scenes, often drawing on his historian’s imagination: I, 1, 3 (the deserted streets of the city); II, 7, 4 (the hubbub at the time of the Passion); III, 16-18, 1 (starvation in Jerusalem); V, 5, 1 (captives being haled off; cf. also I, 5, 2); V, 11-14, 1 (a scene of sadistic killing that owes more to Ovid than to any factual source). He seems ready to invent details to enhance his effects (see nn. on II, 5, 2; II, 20, 3; III, 13-15, 2).

Allegorical Occasionally referred to as figurative, mystical, a deeper sense, and relating the text to the synagogue, but much more usually to the church, past and present. In Book 3 this mode sometimes concerns Christ rather than (or as well as) His church (see III, prol., 4; earlier, note II, 7, 3-4). As to the past, William is especially concerned with the sufferings of the Christian martyrs, and with the continuing problems caused by pagans, heretics17 and ‘bad catholics’.18 As to the present, he often criticises, in an unspecific way, the failings of prominent persons.

Note I, 8, 6 on Arius and other heretics (a quasi-historical passage) See I, 7, 7; I, 17, 7-9. Persecutors of the church never lacked: they sprouted like the hydra’s heads (I, 17, 7). Hence quasi-historical passages like III, 13-15, 8. 17  18 

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In these gloomy reflections on his own day, William is much influenced by Gregory the Great, whose words on the famine of preachers he invokes four times19 (first at 1, 2, 12; the similar Amos 8, 11 recurs three times). Those who should be spreading the word of God either do not or cannot do it: there is a shortage of educated men in the church (I, 11, 4). Instead they accumulate riches (cf. I, 9, 8) and harass the church (I, 6, 6-7). Priests and bishops are attacked in similar terms in I, 15, 4-5 and I, 20, 6. Bishops destroy monasteries and abbeys, and send monks packing (II, 4, 3); they practice nepotism, and do not try to hide their own sins while daring to criticise monks (II, 3, 3); they rob church properties (II, 17, 3). Priests, monks and nuns come under the lash in IV, 2, 5. There is even dark talk of killings (IV, 13, 2). ‘Kings and powerful laymen’ are criticised for scorning the religious and robbing the church (II, 2, 3), and kings are similarly associated with churchmen in II, 6, 4. Priests sell their grace (II, 14, 3; cf. V, 4, 2). In sum, ‘the whole world is going downhill into evil, and almost no one brings help’ (1, 7, 5). Documentation for at least some of these failings on the part of the church (and state) can be found in William’s historical (and hagiographical) works; for William commentary-writing can be history by other means. He found himself censoring his own remarks on the troubles of his day in his later work on GR and GP; the commentary could be just as biting, and a reader might know who was being aimed at. In one remarkable passage (I, 14, 5-9)20 William, though not naming names, clearly moves to talking about the Norman Conquest and its effect on England. The invaders were not ‘worthy’ opponents (for this concept see I, 14, 9 n.), but were being used by God (cf. also II, 4, 2 on the scourge of ‘outsiders’) to punish the sins of the English just as those of the Jews had been punished by the agency of the Babylonians. William characteristically puts this notion in a wider historical context, but he ends the passage by talking of a ‘personal grief ’. 19  Not used by Paschasius. But Paschasius too had found room for criticism of his own age. 20  I have discussed this in Winterbottom 2010. It is tempting to read the end of I, 18, 10 similarly. See also V, 15-16, 1 n.

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Moral Relating the text to the individual soul. The soul is seen as the rational part of man,21 implanted in him by God and fighting a perpetual battle against the forces of unreason: the passions within, the Devil without, hardly to be distinguished. Sin is all too easy to succumb to (e.g. I, 1, 7-9), not least in one’s youth (III, 2528, 8-9).22 In a passage that sounds especially personal, William asks for Christ’s help to escape Sodom’s guilt and Sodom’s penalty (II, 3, 5; cf. also II, 4, 8). Death is a constant preoccupation.23 The demons will be especially dangerous at that point, and beyond it there may lie hell. Only penitence will make possible the attainment of ‘glory’ in heaven; see esp. I, 5, 5 (‘let us contrive agonies for our flesh’). It is in these sections of the commentary that William sounds his most personal notes. His conscience is unwearyingly active;24 only Christ can save him from the fate he vividly imagines for himself (see esp. 1, 17, 13).25 His agonised reflections in II, 4, 7-8 echo Augustine and rival him in the note of sincerity.

21  e.g. II, 3, 4: beasts might have other ‘virtues’, like proneness to anger, but not reason. It was fatally easy for a man to slip down to their level (I, 4, 12; I, 6, 9; I, 15, 8), like the Chaldeans described in III, 46-48, 1. The Devil took their shapes (III, 10-12, 4). 22  But Augustine was an encouraging model; he had been bound by sin in his youth, but later escaped the toils (I, 1, 10). All the same, William, at forty, feels the need to make ‘careful enquiry to see if in our youth we exposed ourselves to treacherous frolics; if we have lost our chastity; if now, as we decline into old age, we feel active in us some remains of enticements, some traces of pleasures’ (III, 40-42, 1). Sin was not easily distinguished from sensual pleasures, lovingly dwelt on by William in I, 1, 8 and I, 20, 9. 23  See e.g. I, 2, 16; I, 3, 7; I, 9, 13; I, 14, 13; II, 22, 1; III, 7-9, 10; III, 10-12, 10 and 13; III, 13-15, 9. 24  See I, 2, 14 with n.; the allusion to Augustine, Confessions 1, 12, 19 is one of several in William’s work (CC CM 244, 318-319); the torments of conscience are the counterpart of the torments of hell (cf. II, 4, 6). Note also I, 8, 13 (‘the shadows of our sins disquiet us, and assail us as we pray, when we should least wish them to’). 25  For the role of the Bible in countering sin, see I, 4, 7; in I, 14, 8 a verse from Proverbs is recommended as an example to help us be patient. Despair was always a danger; the remedy was penitence (II, 13, 5; III, 16-18, 10).

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Introduction

‘Paschasius … is unattractive, because he strove for what he regarded as verbal charm’ This commentary, like many books, will strike different readers quite differently. The historically minded will be especially interested in signs that the author is himself (or at least has been in his unregenerate past) a practising historian. Someone more philosophically or theologically inclined will see it first and foremost as a work of meditation on a sacred text.26 One of more literary tastes, like the present writer, cannot but notice the emphasis that William puts on the style of his adaptation of Paschasius. While praising his model’s unsurpassable piety, he criticises him for the way in which he expressed himself. To a modern reader, Paschasius does seem repellent enough, not so much because of any affecting of charm, but because of a certain unrelenting verbosity unrelieved by much attempt to win over the reader. William goes on to say that his friend has asked him to re-word his exemplar, for ‘no one then will fail to reap the benefit just because he is offended by the harshness of the language’. Paschasius’ search for charm, it seems, led him, in William’s view, into harshness. But William has no quarrel with such a search in itself, and his implication is that he hopes to have succeeded better than Paschasius in writing attractively. William, a highly learned, scholarly and intelligent man, was at root a compiler. His forte lay in the ordering of the knowledge he accumulated from others; that was the essence both of history and of biblical exegesis in the patristic tradition. But it was important to him, and to us, that his books should be elegant. The prologue to the Gesta Regum is much concerned with style; the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, one of the few sources for much of the period covered, were ‘rough annals’ which William aspired to season with Roman salt. In the commentary, too, one major concern of the author is to write attractively where Paschasius had failed to please. For William’s book as a meditation in the tradition of Augustine, see the eloquent and subtle analyses of S. Sønnesyn in CC CM 244, pp. xviii-xxiii and his later book (2012), 42-59. 26 

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This is not the place27 to discuss William’s Latin and the style he adopted. Enough to say that he employs, it may be felt to excess, the balanced and rhyming prose that he had used even at heightened points of the historical works. If my translation at times reads oddly, that is at least sometimes the result of an attempt to match William’s exuberant and even baroque manner. My notes occasionally comment on the difficulties it has given me, not just in reproducing the author’s mannerisms, but in the most basic understanding of what he intended to convey.

****** Scriptural citations In quoting from the Bible, William not infrequently diverges from the Vulgate as we know it. This will sometimes be due to his own carelessness (he will often be quoting from memory) or to corruption by scribes. At other times it results from his citing not from a Bible on his own shelves, but from an intermediate source; where this source is patristic, the text may, with more or less propriety, be referred to the Old Latin Bible (VL = Vetus Latina). In rendering William’s direct citations from the Bible, I have used the Douai/Rheims translation in the text I happened to have to hand (London/Glasgow, 1899), making changes where the Latin necessitated them, and bringing the punctuation into line with what I printed in the Latin. The contrast of its old-fashioned language with my own twenty-first century translation will give some flavour of the contrast between William’s own style and that of the Latin Vulgate. The Douai/Rheims version does not capitalise ‘he’, ‘him’ or ‘his’ when God or Christ is being mentioned, though I do, and I have preserved this difference, as well as some orthographical idiosyncrasies. The names of Hebrew letters are given as in Douai/Rheims (they do not appear in the Authorised Version). 27 

But see Winterbottom 2003, 129-147, at pp. 145-147.

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On the other hand, I have, outside citations, normally given biblical proper names in the guise familiar to English readers from the Authorised Version, which quite often differs from Douai/ Rheims in this respect. Where, occasionally, this procedure has caused oddities in a particular context, I have not stuck to the rule.

Notes on the translation I employ feminine pronouns for the city (ciuitas) of Jerusalem, the church (aecclesia) and the soul (anima). I sometimes translate animus by ‘soul’, at e.g. I, 2, 3 (where William is perhaps influenced by the ‘classical’ tone of the passage); I, 16, 3; II, 18, 3 (animus for varation after anima?). But decision is often difficult. Similarly mens is used for anima at I, 2, 15 (a passage drawing on Prudentius).

The reference system In the body of the translation, chapter and verse of Lamentations are given in Arabic numerals to conform with the Latin text. But elsewhere (including the running heads) the chapter is given in Roman numerals, the verse(s) in Arabic. To these I have added subsections for ease of reference within the often long passages of commentary (thus ‘I, 1, 8’ or ‘III, 19-21, 1’). The sub-section numbers appear in the inner margin of the translation; the numbers in the outer margin refer to the corresponding pages of the Latin text. In this reference system no account is taken of the four books into which William divided his commentary (above, n. 10). But at times in the footnotes, when I wish to give precise references to the wording of the Latin, I use the system employed in CC CM 244, where Roman numerals indicate William’s book and Arabic numerals the line (thus e.g. ‘I, 507’).

22

Introduction

A note on the text The text was printed in full for the first time in CC CM 244 (Turnhout, 2011: ‘cura et studio Michael Winterbottom et Rodney M. Thomson opitulante Sigbjørn Sønnesyn’). A valuable precursor is Farmer 1962, which prints and translates some extended passages, and helpfully summarises the main themes of the book. There are only three manuscripts. Most important, and only slightly defective, is Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 868, s. XII 2/4 (B). London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. XII, s. XII 2/4, (C) is superior in quality, but it was badly damaged in a fire in the eighteenth century. Oxford, Bodleian Library, James 27, s. XVII (J) present a few short extracts copied from C before the fire. I occasionally refer to B and C in the footnotes. For a list of places where what I translate differs from what is printed in CC CM 244, see pp. 31-32; I draw attention in particular to a major re-paragraphing of the Prologue, and to various adjustments to the numbering of sections in Book 3 (see nn. on III, 1-3, 1; III, 4-6, 7; III, 25-28, 11). Some textual problems are alluded to in the footnotes, to give the reader an idea of the uncertainties that remain.

23

Bibliography

List of Abbreviations BT CC CM CC CM 244

CC SL CSEL GCS MGH AA OCT ODML OED OMT PG PL TLL

Bibliotheca Teubneriana Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis Willelmi Meldunensis monachi Liber super Explanationem Lamentationum Ieremiae prophetae – eds M. Winterbottom, R.  M. Thomson (CC CM 244), Turnhout, 2011 Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte Monumenta Germaniae Historica Auctores Antiquissimi Oxford Classical Texts Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources The Oxford English Dictionary Oxford Medieval Texts Patrologia Graeca Patrologia Latina Thesaurus Linguae Latinae

Primary Sources Ambrose, Epist. = Ambrosivs, Epistulae et Acta, tom. 3 – ed. M. Zelzer (CSEL, 82), Vienna, 1982.

24

Bibliography

Ambrose, In Ps. 118 = Ambrosivs, Expositio Psalmi cxviii – ed. M. Petschenig (CSEL, 62), Vienna, 1913 (ed. alt. curante M. Zelzer, 1999). Ambrose, Off. = Ambrosivs, De officiis – ed. M. Testard (CC SL, 15), Turnhout, 2000. Apuleius, Socr. = Apvleivs, De deo Socratis in Apvleivs, De philosophia libri – ed. C. Moreschini (BT; Apulei Platonici Madaurensis opera quae supersunt, 3), Stuttgart, Leipzig, 1991, pp. 7-38. Augustine, Ciu. = Avgvstinvs, De ciuitate Dei – eds B. Dombart, A. Kalb (CC SL, 47-48), Turnhout, 1955. Augustine, Conf. = Avgvstinvs, Confessiones – ed. L. Verheijen (CC SL, 27), Turnhout, 1981. Augustine, In euang. Ioh. = Avgvstinvs, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus cxxiv – ed. R. Willems (CC SL, 36), Turnhout, 1954 (2. ed., 1990). Augustine, In Ps. = Avgvstinvs, Enarrationes in Psalmos i-l/li-c/ci-cl – eds E. Dekkers, J. Fraipont (CC SL, 38-40), Turnhout, 1956 (2. ed., 1990). Augustine, Trin. = Avgvstinvs, De trinitate libri XV, Libri I-XII – eds W. J. Mountain, F. Glorie (CC SL 50), Turnhout, 1968. Bede, De schematibus = Beda, De schematibus et tropis – ed. C. B. Kendall (CC SL, 123A), pp. 142-171. Bede, De tab. = Beda, De tabernaculo – ed. D. Hurst (CC SL, 119A), Turnhout, 1969, pp. 5-139. Bede, Hist. eccl. = Beda, Storia degli Inglesi – ed. M. Lapidge, Mondadori, 2 tom., 2008, 2010. Bede, In Act. = Beda, Expositio actuum apostolorum et retractatio – ed. M. L. W. Laistner (Cambridge, Mass., 1939). Bede, In I Sam. = Beda, In primam partem Samuhelis (CC SL, 119), Turnhout, 1962, pp. 9-272. Ps. Bede, In Ps. = Ps. Beda, De psalmorum libro exegesis (PL, 93), Paris, 1850, cols. 477-1098. Caesarius of Arles, Serm. = Caesarianvs Arelatensis, Sermones – ed. G. Morin (CC SL, 103-4), Turnhout, 1953. Cicero, De orat. = Cicero, De oratore – ed. K. Kumaniecki (BT), Leipzig, 1969.

25

Bibliography

Cicero, Inu. = Cicero, De inventione – ed. E. Stroebel (BT), Stuttgart, 1915. Cicero, Mur. = Cicero, Pro Murena – ed. A. C. Clark (OCT), Oxford, 1905, pp. 243-291. Cicero, Off. = Cicero, De officiis – ed. M. Winterbottom (OCT), Oxford, 1994. Cyprian, Mortal. = Cyprianvs, De mortalitate – ed. M. Simonetti (CC SL, 3A), Turnhout, 1976, pp. 17-32. Dicta Catonis = Disticha Catonis – ed. M. Boas, Amsterdam, 1952. Fvlgentius, Serm. = Fvlgentivs episcopvs Rvspensis, Sermones – ed. J. Fraipont (CC SL, 91, 91A), Turnhout, 1968, pp. 889-942. Gregory the Great, Epist. = Gregorivs Magnvs, Registrum epistularum. Libri i-vii, libri viii-xiv – ed. D. Norberg (CC SL, 140, 140A), Turnhout, 1982. Gregory the Great, In euang. = Gregorivs Magnvs, Homiliae in euangelia – ed. R. Étaix (CC SL, 141), Turnhout, 1999. Gregory the Great, Moral. = Gregorivs Magnvs, Moralia in Iob. Libri i-x, libri xi-xxii, libri xxiii-xxxv – ed. M. Adriaen (CC SL, 143, 143A, 143B), Turnhout, 1979, 1979, 1985. Ps. Gregory the Great, Respons. = Ps. Gregorivs Magnvs, Liber responsalis siue Antiphonarius (PL, 78), Paris, 1849, cols. 725-850. Hegesippus = Hegesippvs, Historiae – ed. V. Ussani (CSEL, 66), Vienna, Leipzig, 1932. Hildebert of lavardin, Carm. = Hildeberti Cenomannensis episcopi carmina minora – ed. A. B. Scott (BT), Leipzig, 1969. Horace, Ars poet. = Horativs, De arte poetica in Horativs, Opera – ed. S. Borzsák (BT), Leipzig, 1984, pp. 292-312. Horace, Epist. = Horativs, Epistulae in Horativs, Opera – ed. S. Borzsák (BT), Leipzig, 1984, pp. 230-291. Hymn. = A. S. Walpole, Early Latin Hymns, Cambridge, 1922. Isid., Etym. = Isidorvs Hispalensis, Etymologiae siue Origines, ed. W. M. Lindsay (OCT), 2 tom., Oxford, 1911.

26

Bibliography

Jerome, Epist. = Hieronymvs, Epistulae – ed. J. Hilberg (CSEL, 54-6), ed. alt., Vienna, 1996. Jerome, In Ier. = Hieronymvs, In Hieremiam libri vi – ed. S. Reiter (CC SL, 74), Turnhout, 1960. Jerome, In Naum = Hieronymvs, Commentarii in Naum – ed. M. Adriaen (CC SL, 76A), Turnhout, 1970, pp. 525-578. Jerome, In Soph. = Hieronymvs, Commentarii in Sophoniam – ed. M. Adriaen (CC SL, 76A), Turnhout, 1970, pp. 655-711. Jerome, In Zach. = Hieronymvs, Commentarii in Zachariam – ed. M. Adriaen (CC SL, 76A), Turnhout, 1970, pp. 747-900. Jerome, Praef. Vulg. Reg. = Hieronymvs, Prologus in libro Regum – ed. R. Weber in Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, 2 tom., ed. alt., Stuttgart, 1975, pp. 364-366. John the Scot, Periphys. = Iohannes Scottvs sev Erivgena, Periphyseon. Libri i-v – ed. E. A. Jeauneau (CC CM, 161-5), Turnhout, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2003. Josephus, see Ps. Rufinus Juvenal = D. Ivnivs Ivvenalis, Saturae in A. Persi Flacci et D. Iuni Iuuenalis Saturae – ed. W. V. Clausen (OCT), Oxford, 1992, pp. 37-175. Leo the Great, Tract. = Leo Magnvs, Tractatus – ed. A. Chavasse (CC SL, 138, 138A), Turnhout, 1973. Lucan = Lvcanvs, Bellum ciuile – ed. A. E. Housman, Blackwell, Oxford, 1927. Martial = Martialis, Epigrammata – ed. D.  R. Shackleton Bailey (BT), Stuttgart, 1990. Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum (PG, 56), Paris, 1862, cols. 611-946. Orosius, Hist. = Orosivs, Historiae aduersum paganos – ed. C. Zangemeister (CSEL, 5), Vienna, 1882. Ovid, Trist. = Ovidivs, Tristia in P. Ovidi Nasonis Tristium libri quinque Ibis Ex Ponto libri quattuor Halieutica Fragmenta – ed. S.  G. Owen (OCT), Oxford, 1915. Paschasius = Pascasivs Radbertvs, Expositio in Lamentationes Hieremiae – ed. B. Paulus (CC CM, 85), Turnhout, 1988.

27

Bibliography

Petronius = Petronivs Arbiter, Satyricon – ed. K. Müller (BT), 4. ed., editio iterata correctior, Munich, Leipzig, 2003. Pliny, Epist. = Plinivs, Epistulae – ed. R. A. B. Mynors (OCT), Oxford, 1963. Pliny the Elder, Nat. = Plinivs, Naturalis historia – ed. C. Mayhoff (BT), tom. 2, Leipzig, 1909. Prudentius, Cathemerinon liber = Prvdentivs, Carmina – ed. J. Bergman (CSEL, 61), Vienna, Leipzig, 1926, pp. 1-76. Prudentius, Hamartigenia = Prvdentivs, Carmina – ed. J. Bergman (CSEL, 61), Vienna, Leipzig, 1926, pp. 125-163. Prudentius, Psychomachia = Prvdentivs, Carmina – ed. J. Bergman (CSEL, 61), Vienna, Leipzig, 1926, pp. 165-211. Quodvultdeus, Temp. Barb. = De tempore barbarico ii in Opera Quodvultdeo Carthaginiensi episcopo tributa – ed. R. Braun (CC SL, 60), Turnhout, 1976, pp. 473-486. Rabanus Maurus, In Eccli. = Rabanvs Mavrvs, Commentaria in Ecclesiasticum (PL, 109), Paris, 1864, col. 763-1126. Reg. Ben. = Benedicti Regula – ed. R. Hanslik (CSEL, 75), Vienna, 1960. Reg. Mag. = La Règle du Maître – ed. A. de Vogüé (SC, 105-6), 3 tom., Paris, 1964, 1964, 1965. Resp. Rom. = [Responsoriale Romanum] in R.-J. Hesbert, Corpus Antiphonalium Officii iii-iv [= Rerum ecclesiasticarum documenta, Series maior, Fontes 9-10], Rome, 1968, 1970. Rufinus, Hist. = Die lateinische Übersetzung des Rufinus – ed. T. Mommsen (GCS, 9, 1; 9, 2 = Eusebius 2, 1; 2, 2), Leipzig, 1903, 1908. Ps. Rufinus, Ios(ephi) Ant(iquitates Iudaicae) = Iosephvs, Opera – ed. sine titulo ‘in aedibus Eucharii Ceruicorni’, ‘impendio et aere … Godefridi Hittorpii’, Coloniae, 1524: praefationem scripsit Iacobus Sobius, pp. 1r-226r. Ps. Rufinus, Ios(ephi) Bell(um) Iud(aicum) = Iosephvs, Opera – ed. sine titulo ‘in aedibus Eucharii Ceruicorni’, ‘impendio et aere … Godefridi Hittorpii’, Coloniae, 1524: praefationem scripsit Iacobus Sobius, pp. 227r-333v. Seneca, Epist. = Seneca, Epistulae – ed. L. D. Reynolds (OCT), 2 tom., Oxford, 1965.

28

Bibliography

Statius, Theb. = P. Papinivs Stativs, Thebais – ed. H.  W. Garrod (OCT), Oxford, 1906. Symmachus, Rel. = Q. Avrelivs Symmachvs, Relationes – ed. O. Seeck (MGH AA 6, 1), Berlin, 1883, pp. 279-317. Terence = Terentivs, Comoediae – eds R. Kauer, W.  M. Lindsay (OCT), 2. ed., Oxford, 1926. Tertullian, Apol. = Tertvllianvs, Apologeticum – ed. E. Dekkers (CC SL, 1), Turnhout, 1954, pp. 85-171. Tertullian, Orat. = Tertvllianvs, De oratione – ed. G.  F. Diercks (CC SL, 1), Turnhout, 1954, pp. 257-274. Valerius Maximus = Valerivs Maximvs, Facta et dicta memorabilia – ed. J. Briscoe (BT), 2 tom., Stuttgart, Leipzig, 1998. Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. = Venantivs Fortvnatvs, Opera poetica – ed. F. Leo (MGH AA 4, 1), Berlin, 1881. Vergil, Aen. = P. Vergilivs Maro, Aeneis – ed. R. A. B. Mynors (OCT), Oxford, 1969, pp. 103-422. Vergil, Ecl. = P. Vergilivs Maro, Eclogae – ed. R. A. B. Mynors (OCT), Oxford, 1969, pp. 1-28. Vergil, Georg. = P. Vergilivs Maro, Georgica – ed. R. A. B. Mynors (OCT), Oxford, 1969, pp. 29-101. William of Malmesbury, GP = Gesta Pontificum Anglorum – ed. M. Winterbottom (OMT), Oxford, 2007: Vol. 1, Text and Translation. William of Malmesbury, GR = Gesta Regum Anglorum – eds R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, M. Winterbottom (OMT), Oxford, 1998: Vol. 1. William of Malmesbury, Mir. = De laudibus et miraculis sanctae Mariae – ed. J. M. Canal (ed. 2: Rome, 1968). William of Malmesbury, VD = Vita Dunstani – eds M. Winterbottom, R. M. Thomson in William of Malmesbury Saints’ Lives (OMT), Oxford, 2002, pp. 165-303. William of Malmesbury, VW = Vita Wulfstani – eds M. Winterbottom, R. M. Thomson in William of Malmesbury Saints’ Lives (OMT), Oxford, 2002, pp. 8-155.

29

Bibliography

Secondary Sources Andrée, A., Gilbertus Universalis Glossa Ordinaria in Lamentationes Ieremie prophete (Stockholm, 2005). Bejczy, I. P., The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2011). Blaise, A., Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens (Turnhout, 1944). Farmer, H., ‘William of Malmesbury’s commentary on Lamentations’, Studia Monastica 4 (1962), 283-311. Kelly, J. N. D., Early Christian Doctrines (London, 1958). Lausberg, H., Handbook of Literary Rhetoric (eds D. E. Orton and R. D. Anderson: Brill, 1998). Otto, A., Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer (Leipzig, 1890). Sønnesyn S. O., William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History (Woodbridge, 2012), 42-59. Stramaglia, A. [Quintiliano] La città che si cibò dei suoi cadaveri (Declamazioni maggiori, 12) (Cassino, 2002). Thomson, R. M., William of Malmesbury Gesta Regum Anglorum, Vol. ii (Oxford, 1999). —, William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, rev. ed. 2003): indispensable and authoritative guide. Winterbottom, M., ‘A new passage of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum’, The Journal of Medieval Latin 11 (2001), 50-59. —, ‘The Language of William of Malmesbury’, in C. J. Mews, C. J. Nederman, R.  M. Thomson (eds), Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 1100-1540 (Turnhout, 2003), 129-47. —, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Normans’, The Journal of Medieval Latin 20 (2010), 70-77.

30

Changes to the Latin Text of CC CM 244

Most of the changes listed here are reflected in the translation. Asterisks signal either corrections to my text or new conjectures. A number of textual problems are raised in the footnotes, to remind the reader that the wording is not always secure. Prol. 88

I 288

exiuit] exsudauit. But another possibility is *exquisiuit, ‘conducted research’.

2265 2812 2892 3287

uani] uacui odio] modo rationabiles] *irrationabiles (cf. I, 614 and 819) aspirat] perit (or the like) miserum] quam miserum in cetu tumultum] in ceco tumultu flatus] *flatu (Sønnesyn), to avoid the awkward change of subject between the two verbs intricatos] intricatus merorique est] meroris conscientiam] perhaps read *conscientia facientes] patientes

II 165

uitia] uitia predixisse

315 598/599 653 871 1485

31

Changes to the Latin Text of CC CM 244

322/323 397 591 631 709 866 891 1477 III prol., 16 181 327, 334 434 629 794 867 1056 1778 2039 IV 500 851 855 1118 1176 1179

uirtutis animae, quae se creatori suo grata commendant, spes] uirtutes, quibus anima se creatori suo grate commendarat, expungunt] uncertain miseriam] memoriam deliberationis] *deliberationis pondere (exempli gratia) Delete patrie terram] terra designantur] perhaps read *designatur ceteri affectuum eius populi] Perhaps read *cetera pro qualitate affectuum eius ponuntur uel ut quod] ut cadant, uel impedire quo minus

Esset preter rationem, inopi presertim sensui, quid *quicquid luminis (omitting genuini) See III, 4-6, 7 n. quia et] quando diurni] *diuini (cf. III, 13-15, 6 [III, 713]), with (at least) manuscript B penitendo] *penitentia reliquae] *reliquiae (reliquie B) secura] *secure prenuntiatur] pronuntiatur Perhaps read * iudices; cf. §7 (III, 2073-4) mei] *populi mei (misprint corrected) calix quoque] quoque calix contextione] One expects *contactu (contactio is not found); cf. Augustine, In Ps. 140, 8. allegorice] historice in infructuosum] *in fructuosum (infructuosum B) coaptant] *coaptantur. An alternative would be to delete per.

32

William, monk of Meldunum * On the exposition of the Lamentations of Jeremiah

William often referred to his monastery by this name, which recalls its Irish founder Meldum (Maeldubh). * 

Prologue Prologue

1.

You have often urged me to draw from the sheath of sloth a pen that has long been on holiday, and to employ it on writing things that are all-important. My beloved brother, I obey your commands, only asking pardon for the shortness of the work: brevity, as you well know, is something that has always been my friend and familiar. Yes, I obey, and the more readily because what you advise is in accord with your character and at the same time consonant with my own intention. For in the past, when I amused myself with histories,a the charm of the subjectb suited my greener years and happy lot. Now advancing age and worsening circumstances demand a different kind of work.c The ideal will be something able to warn me off the world and set me on fire towards God. Hitherto I have lived for myself, enough and more than enough. Henceforth I must live for my Maker. It is only right to show my gratitude to Him who has granted me life for so many years without punishing me too severely. I am forty today; I have come to the mid point of the course that the divine psalmist appoints for the life of man, when he says: The days of our years in them are threescore and ten years. But if in the strong they be fourscore years: and what is more of them is labour and sorrow (Ps. 89, 10). I shall show Cf. Vergil, Georg. 4, 565. Not because the events described were necessarily pleasant, but because history was seen as an attractive genre. It is hard to know if the repetition of rerum is intended to have point, or is inadvertent. c  One expects the phrase aliud dicendi genus to refer to style, but the translation reflects what seems to be the argument of the passage. a 

b 

35

3

ON Lamentations

4

ingratitude if I do not duly give a half, or at least the half of a half, to Him from whom I received the whole. This is why, from the whole range of possible topics, you have chosen for me the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah, that through their exposition the grace of compunction might be more abundant and the flame of divine love more inspiring. But when, well aware of my lack of understanding, I felt panic-stricken at the prospect of entering the deep waters of a book scarcely explained by any predecessora (even the blessed Jerome, who expounded all the other prophets,b did not touch it), you put in my way Paschasius Radbertus, who did expound it. You asked me to abbreviate him for you. For while Paschasius’ content is of unblemished piety and no one surpasses him there, he is unattractive, because he strove for what he regarded as verbal charm. That is why you want me to put into my own words choice extracts from his commentary; no one then will fail to reap the benefit just because he is offended by the harshness of the language. It is a fact that the excerpting of a few thoughts keeps even the sleepiest reading on, and seeks to avoid (and in fact does avoid)c boring even the choosiest. To this task I am not, I think, unequal; and I am glad to obey you as a friend to whom I owe more the more I repay. More grasping than any miser is he who fails to pay a friend interest in words even though he is well aware how deeply he is in debt to him. We read of many kinds of lament in Holy Scripture. For example, Abraham slept with his fathers, and Isaac and Ishmael bewailed him.d Twelve patriarchs, when they were bringing the funeral procession of their father Jacob over from Egypt to Canaan, wearied the air with such frequent complaints that the place then and henceforward was assigned the name ‘Mourning of the Egyptians’.e The sons of Israel saw off the departing souls of their

William does not name Rabanus Maurus: see Introduction, p. 13. Oddly making it sound as though the Book of Lamentations was the work of a prophet other than Jeremiah (on whom Jerome did write a commentary). c  The meaning of the Latin is not quite clear. d  Cf. Gen. 25, 9. e  Cf. Gen. 50, 11-13. a 

b 

36

2.

3.

Prologue (1.-4.)

4.

leaders Aaron and Moses with thirty days of laments.a The virgins of Israel used every year to lament the daughter of Jephthah: they thought that it was tragic that she should have died by her father’s hand even though her chastity was inviolate.b The splendid lament of David for Saul and Jonathanc will outlast the centuries and live for ever; its fame can never be dimmed, so often is it sung by the choirs of the church. Ezekiel saw written in a book lamentations, and a canticle, and woe (Ezek. 2, 9): a canticle for the glory of the just, lamentations for the forgiveness of the penitent, woe for the punishment of the stubborn. Jeremiah, taking his cue from the destruction of Jerusalem, composed lamentations very long and very deep in meaning. And others made lament in different ways, some because they had lost relatives, some on being deprived of their kingship, some out of tenderness of heart. Now Ezekiel had scarcely begun to enter upon his laments and the justification for them before he fell silent. It was only Jeremiah (as I said) who made a long and continuous speech, in which he not so much bewails the sufferings of his pitiable nation as devotes his lamentations to our good. He embellishes them by using the alphabet four times overd and metre three times over.e

Cf. Num. 20, 30; Deut. 34, 8. Cf. Judg. 11, 40. c  Cf. 2 Kgs. 1, 17-27. As to the singing in church, Professor R. W. Pfaff kindly informs me that William is likely to be referring to the antiphons at Vespers during the time when the Historia Regum is the main biblical diet at Matins, in the early summer. d  That is, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are prefixed to the verses of the text in the first four chapters. Cf. ‘the repeated alphabet’ and ‘the fourfold alphabet’ in the next paragraph. e  In the next paragraph William speaks of ‘the variety of metre’, and of ‘the triple recurrence [reuolutione] of metre’. Now in III, prol., 1 (to which ‘later on in my commentary’ in § 5 refers forward), he distinguishes between the first two books, in ‘Sapphics’, and the third, in ‘trimeters’. In this he follows Jerome (Epist. 30, 3). Jerome goes on to say that the fourth ‘alphabet’ is similar to the first and the second (‘Sapphics’, then). It seems that in the present passage terno metro and terna reuolutione refer to the using of the same metre three times over, which is true of the ‘Sapphics’ on Jerome’s scheme (though William does not fully reproduce it); the ‘variety of metre’ mentioned in § 5 will refer to the one book in ‘trimeters’. In any case, these ‘metres’ are not identifiable in the Latin. a 

b 

37

5

ON Lamentations

6

But I shall speak about the repeated alphabet and the variety of metre later on in my commentary. For the moment, I must not fail to remark that Jeremiah’s words are to be understood in three ways: the historical, with respect to the Jewish nation; the allegorical, with respect to the church as a whole; and the moral, with respect to each and every individual soul. What is more, in his lament for the misfortunes of humankind, he exploits the number seven, that is, by using the fourfold alphabet and the triple recurrence of metre. I cannot believe this to be without meaning; for anyone who thinks that a prophet at the height of his powers could do something for no reason is valuing him below his deserts. Wherefore we should understand that, in his attack on the sins he is lamenting, the prophet employs a sevenfold method of speech because it matches the sevenfold sins of the synagogue in olden time, of the church very often, even today, and of every individual soul almost always.a For God gave to the people of Israel in the Old Testament four ‘orders’ of rulers, viz. judges and kings, prophets and priests, by whose living voice those untutored minds might be restrained from evil and kept safe in good. Next He also gave three ‘orders’ b of scriptures: Law, as in the books of Moses; Prophecy, as in the book of Isaiah and the rest; Hagiography, as in the book of Job and the others, by which the better educated might themselves learn, and pass on to others for them to learn, what is to be avoided and what done. But those who read these writings know very well how much store the Jews set by this; for they were always liable to be carried away headlong by the onward pressure of vice. In the same way, the whole faith of the church grows strong by the preaching of the four Gospels and belief in the Holy Trinity. Yet how many there are in the church who hide under a sheep’s

The wording of this sentence is not certain, and I have translated very freely in order to get over what I take to be William’s meaning. The application to synagogue, church and soul is worked out in §§ 7-10, and the argument is recapitulated in § 11. The paragraphing, different from that in the Latin, is designed to make the structure clear. b  William draws on Jerome, Praef. Vulg. Reg. a 

38

5.

6.

7.

8.

Prologue (5.-10.)

9.

10.

skin and either secretly waver in the faith or by openly living evil lives deny God in their works!a Again, each and every man is made up of four elements in the bodyb and three capacitiesc in the soul, irascibility, rationality, and ‘concupiscibility’. Even ordinary people know of the former; philosophy has expended much toil in disputing about the latter. When these seven answer to each other in a man in concordant harmony, he is said and believed to be happy; hence the poet, wanting to coin a phrase for the most blessed of men, said: ‘O three- and four-fold blessed!’ d On the other hand, a man sins in three ways: when he contemplates evil, or hastens into an deed, or panders to his own obstinacy by following up a sinful act. From these three sins the prophet asserts (Ps. 1, 1) that the blessed man is free when he says Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, that is, who has not, in the manner of the ungodly, turned over in his mind the idea of doing evil, nor stood in the way of sinners, that is, who has not even fleetingly fallen into sin, nor sat in the chair of pestilence, that is, who has not perniciously cleaved to sins because of a kind of contempt for God. To these three types of sinning correspond the three dead men into whom the Lord Jesus poured back the breath of life;e this is too well known for me to need to dwell on it. From these sins, once they have been nurtured in the lap of shamelessness, springs habit. In its grip, a man who harms only himself sins doubly towards God, in doing what he should not have done and not doing what he should have done. In the same way, the man who harms his neighbour sins doubly towards him, in impairing him by word or deed, or by his bad example provoking him to sin.

Cf. Tit. 1, 16. Cf. Gregory the Great, Moral. 35, 16 (p. 1802) (hot and cold, wet and dry). c  uirtutes, here corresponding to Greek dunameis; see perhaps Blaise, s.v. uirtus 3, a mixed bag. In our text cf. II, 3, 4 and III, 7-9, 8-9. The three ‘capacities’ listed here correspond to the three ‘parts’ of the Platonic soul: ‘spiritedness’, reason and desire. d  Vergil, Aen. 1, 94. e  Cf. Luke 7, 11-15 (the son of the widow of Nain), John 11, 1-44 (Lazarus), and e.g. Luke 8, 41-56 (the daughter of Jairus). a 

b 

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ON Lamentations

It is only right, then, that the prophet laments the sins of his people by using a sevenfold mode of speech; for by disobeying their rulers and their books, they had provoked God into bringing about their final destruction. The same may be said about many in the church, the same in particular about every soul that is despaired of: the former by their disbelief make a mockery of the four Gospels and belief in the Holy Trinity, while individual souls, though sinning under the seven headings,a pretend to be Christians. I have touched on these things briefly to show that the prophet was no trifler, employing the alphabet for play or metre for vainglory. Everything else to do with the interpretation of the alphabet, the ‘connection’ of the letters, and the way in which the 22 letters fit in with the 22 books of the Old Testament, is explained by the magisterial Jerome in his letter to Marcella.b The reader who is eager to get on with my book may find it enough that I have given this reference. Let me, meanwhile, proceed with Lamentations, to which this has been the exordium.

a  To the three types of sinning (§ 9) are added what seem to be four sub-divisions of the habit of sinning: sin towards God and sin towards one’s neighbour, each ‘double’. b  In fact to Paula (Epist. 30), though some of Jerome’s manuscripts name Marcella.

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11.

12.

Book One

1.

2.

3.

1, 1. Aleph. This, the first letter in Hebrew, is translated ‘teaching’. It is placed at the head of Lamentations as an indication that this first verse shows the entire purport of the laments to come: all that follows the first verse is there rather to amplify the pathos than to supplement our understanding. How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! The mistress of the Gentiles is become as a widow; the prince of provinces is made tributary! The word ‘sit’, apart from the meaning familiar to everyone, has a plethora of senses in both secular and sacred writings. In secular literature, it may mean ‘please’, as in ‘the preferable opinion sat’,a or ‘remain’ and ‘persist’, as in ‘the wounds of civil war sit deep’.b In Holy Writ, it often signifies the power of God (as in Thou that sittest upon the cherubims (Ps. 79, 2), and The Lord Jesus was taken up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God (Mark 16, 19)), often the humiliation of man, either willing (as in Come down, sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon (Isa. 47, 1)) or involuntary (as here: How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people!). For the prophet is grieved that Jerusalem, a city once packed with so many peoples, crowded with so many foreigners, who flooded in so freely that the far-flung walls could scarcely find room for them, is now like a wilderness, with scarcely a single inhabitant. Shameful and pitiable that in those spacious a  b 

Cf. Statius, Thebaid 2, 368. Lucan 1, 32.

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ON Lamentations

9

halls only the occasional resident roams! Within what had once been the circuit of the city there was now an unsightly collection of ruins. As people wandered about the blocked streets, a responding echo would keep the ear in anxious suspense: for to hear only an occasional voice in a vast area gives rise to panic. It added to the wretchedness that Jerusalem had now lost God’s help and was sighing for her ancient possessions like a widow. Once ruler of the neighbouring nations, the Palestinians and the Syrians, but also the Moabites and the Ammonites whom we now call Arabs, she had exacted taxes from enormous provinces; now she had herself to pay tribute to Babylonian robbers. Her old prosperity piled new woes on her, for it is less of a burden never to have possessed riches than to have lost them once possessed. It is easier to bear a life of poverty from choice than to come down from a high throne to a lower station. That is luck; this is to be wretched indeed. But the prophet also bewails holy church allegorically, left solitary by her sons either lapsing from the good in time of peace, or in time of persecution finding tortures too much for them. By these means she is emptied of the peoples that once filled her. Whereas she used to dwell in her house, a mother rejoicing in her sons, the heathen being compelled to worship her Betrothed, she now groans for the losses attending her widowhood. What is more, she used to take daily tribute from the Devil in the abundance of new believers; now she (as it were) herself pays tribute, when she sees much of her glory fall away, so many are those she has lost. But because each Christian is a part of the church as a whole, the lament is equally meant to apply to a soul hardened in her sins. What solitude is more wretched than the medley of vices that throngs about the soul when virtues are overthrown? A city is not embellished by the din and ignorance of the commons, but by a court where a few good men take counsel. It does not profit a soul to have many inhabitants: they must be good. And the soul is rightly likened to a city, for God has fortified her with natural passions and virtues, and, into the bargain, has redeemed her at the price of His blood, and clothed her in the likeness of His countenance. That is why the psalmist says to God: The light of thy countenance, O Lord, is sealed upon us (Ps. 4, 7); that is, in our

42

4.

5.

6.

I, 1 (3.-7.)

7.

higher part, the soul, is the mirror-image, or (to put it better) the seal of God’s eternity; for just as God gives life to all things, moves and steers them, so our soul (which, according to the apostle,a lives and moves and is in God) in her small way gives life to the body, moves and steers it. And just as God is one potentially but three in person, so the soul, though of one nature, has within her three ‘dignities’: understanding, will and memory. And just as from the Father is begotten the Son, and from the Father and the Son proceeds the Holy Spirit, so from the understanding is begotten the will, and from these two proceeds memory. And just as God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are not three gods, so in the soul too understanding, will and memory are not three souls but one soul.b But if she misuses these ‘dignities’, the soul that was bride of God has become a strumpet of vice. Deservedly deprived and bereaved of His help, that noble mistress of so many ‘dignities’ is now the worthless slave of vice. It is all too easy to go down the slippery slope and plunge into vice, but hard to rise up again, difficult to withhold from the Devil his tribute of sin. For if the wretched soul, mindful of the good she has lost, ever tries to look heaven-wards, she slips back at once into the mire, so hard to withstand is the habit of sinning. It is of such people that the prophet says: Woe to those that draw sins as a long rope (Isa. 5, 18). For when sin is linked to sin, a deadly rope is plaited, to pull man back into wrong, even while he strives towards what is right. A pitiful sight—to take no pleasure in sin but not to be able to stop! Hence the wonderful Augustine: ‘My will the Enemy held, and thence had made a chain for me, and bound me. For of a froward will, was a lust made; and a lust served, came about custom; and custom not resisted, came about necessity.’c So the apostle was right to say: For the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do (Rom. 7, 19). Cf. Acts 17, 28. This doctrine derives from a text like Rabanus Maurus, In Eccli. 4; one ultimate source will be Augustine, Trin. 10, 18. c  Augustine, Confessions 8, 5, 10 (tr. E. B. Pusey, adapted). a 

b 

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ON Lamentations

11

Why then this paradox? Did God really abandon His creation to be the plaything of vices? Surely it was rather that man, by his stubbornness in sinning, deserved to receive this punishment: a sin. Of men like this the psalm says: Add thou iniquity upon their iniquity: and let them not enter into thy justice (Ps. 68, 28). Either that, or man himself does not want to rise. He wants to, but not perfectly. He wants to when his avarice is satisfied, he wants to when his raw lusts have been digested.b He does not want to when a pretty figure tempts and feeds his eyes, when an attractive smell is wafted to his nostrils, when the luscious sound of voices in harmony delights his hearing, when the flavour of food provokes his taste, when soft bodies gratify his touch. Amid such squadrons of vice clamouring for attention, amid so many deaths in full view, the blessed Job well said that the life of man upon earth is a warfare (Job 7, 1). Let us therefore strive, with the grace of God to aid us; bearing the shield we all carry—the help of God and our own efforts—let us repel the enemy we all face. When the danger is great, it can be averted by prompt counsel and much sweat. When the danger is critical, there is a more glorious prize to carry home. The Lord knows how to bring out in strength those who were bound by the habit of sinning, and those too who provoke God by their stubbornness, who dwell in sepulchres:c that is, those who not only fall into sin but even find pleasure in tarrying there. For the wicked mind is a hideous sepulchre, giving off the putrid breath of vice. This strength that He possesses in the freeing of sinners the Lord showed by both figurative and concreted examples. Figurative, when He raised Lazarus from the dead after four days.e Dead Cf. I, 5, 10. When they have (as it were) worked their way through his system. William quite often uses the verb digerere, of the bodily function itself and in associated imagery (where translation is sometimes difficult). Cf. I, 309, 1113, 1499, 1676, 2484, 3392 (cf. GR 255, 2 ‘digesto calore uini’, ‘when the heat of the wine had been dissipated’); II, 126-127, 832, 890; III, 837. At I, 1332 indigeste seems to mean ‘inordinately’. c  Cf. Ps. 67, 7. d  i.e. exhibited in actions. e  Cf. John 11, 17-44. For ‘the other cases’ mentioned below, see Prol., § 10 n. a 

b 

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8.

9.

10.

I, 1 (8.) – I, 2 (1.)

1.

for four days is the man who sins in thought, speech and act, and who by a fourth type , that is habit,a corrupts and stains those near and far with the horrid stink of his infamy. This man the Lord raised not (as in the other cases) by uttering a single word, but by shedding tears, by gazing up to heaven, by crying aloud to his Father: working a miracle, but showing a mystery.b All of these thingsc are needed by a soul hardened in sin if she is to arise, freed from the veils of habit. But I should be laughed at if I were to mention concrete examples, for thousands of men have through God been freed from the habit of evil. The blessed Augustine himself, who (as I have said)d complained that he was bound in his adolescence, later boastede that he had sprung from his chains, so freed by the grace of God that, even though his body was often tempted in his sleep by the images of vices, they never came to trouble his mind when he was awake. 1, 2. Beth, the second letter in Hebrew, translated ‘house’, is placed beside the following three versesf to intimate mystically that when the house of God, which is either holy church or the holy soul, sins in the eyes of her Maker, she has to win His grace back by the treaty of penitence.g

This fourfold scheme builds on the threefold one found at Prol., 9. See also III, 7-9, 8 (III, 427: four), 10 (455-456: four) and 12 (479-481: three). b  In the sense that the miracle could be interpreted figuratively. c  Shedding tears, gazing up to heaven, crying aloud to God. d  Cf. I, 1, 7. e  Cf. (apparently) Augustine, Conf. 10, 30, 41. f  i.e. the following three sentences of the text, which make up ‘our’ verse 2; similarly in I, 2, 16 ‘the last verse’ refers to ‘All her friends have despised her …’. For other cases see (at least) I, 3, 1; I, 8, 5; I, 9, 9; I, 11, 5 (from the Gospels); I, 15, 2; II, 7, 2; also III, 64-66, 5 (clauses). But normally uersus means ‘verse’; of course in Lamentations, where the Hebrew letters mark off the divisions, things are clearer cut than elsewhere in the Bible. uersiculus is used four times (I, 7, 10; II, 17, 4; III, 13-15, 5 and 7), to mean ‘verse’. For comma see on I, 6, 1; for colon see on II, 18, 1. g  That is, the understanding between God and man that penitence will lead to forgiveness. a 

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12

ON Lamentations

13

Weeping she hath wept in the night, and her tears are on her jaws.a Here, if you have regard to the historical sense, a metaphor is introduced, a transference from animate to inanimate, showing what is contained by means of what contains: the city is said to have wept and to have cleansed her jaws with tears, though it is not the city but the citizens that can do that. Now, first, the repetition of the same root as both participle and verb, something unknown in secular literature but familiar in Holy Writ, makes clear the high degree of grief. Further, it is a particular sign of sadness that not even at night did weeping cease, so that the survivors in Jerusalem passed sleepless nights because of the downfall of their country. The impact of that calamity meant that they had to spend in laments the time given to mortals by the mercy of God for their rest, to enable them to forget their troubles in sweet sleep. They wailed always, they wailed continually, for it is thought to assuage grief if the tumult inside the breast is dissipated in tears outside it. The prophet further stresses the enormity of this sadness when he says: and her tears are on her jaws. For grief in moderation waters the cheeks and the front parts of the face with tears, but when it is uncontrollable it floods both jaws and clothing with their outpouring. Next comes: There is none to comfort her among all them that were dear to her. This is more or less what is to be expected. Riches win friends, riches attract many to give comfort amid minor losses. But if riches, inconstant as they are, take to flight, then you may see that the comforters follow fortune, not friendship.b A man may be noble, of settled character, highly educated: but when he loses his wealth he at the same time becomes bereft of both friends and comforters. It is not us they love, but our possessions. You are worth what you own. But I used the word ‘our’ inaccurately. Those things are not ours that can be carried away by a tyrant’s violence or by fleeting fortune. The only good a  The Douai version has ‘cheeks’, not unreasonably. But William’s interpretation at times (I, 2, 2 and I, 2, 15 [I, 146, 308-309]) makes the more literal ‘jaws’ necessary. b  William expresses similar sentiments in GR 246, 2.

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2.

3.

I, 2 (2.-5.)

4.

5.

things possessed by the soul are those that, while God’s grace attends, the soul, so long as it remains free,a cannot lose, whatever fear or pressure it is subject to. But the common-or-garden friend is not aware of things of that kind; he is in pursuit only of the perishable, he is subservient only to the transitory. If, as I say, these things disappear, friends disappear with them. Hence the saying: ‘When you are prosperous, you will be able to count many friends; if times become overcast, you will find yourself alone.’ b You are lucky indeed if they are merely non-friends: they may turn into enemies. The worst thing that can befall the wretched is to have their reputation damaged, to be thought to have deserved what they suffer.c That is why we find next: All her friends have despised her, they are become her enemies. This is the way of the world, a common vice. It is not enough for wicked men if they fail to repay their friends with gratitude: they have to employ what they were given to attack the giver. Who could more imperceptibly use secret devices to let you down than one from whom, because of your long and close familiarity with him, you thought none of your business needed to be concealed? The man who will find it easy to disembowel you is one who has wormed his way like a stealthy spy into your bosom. Prosperity, then, attracts friendships; adversity weighs them in the balance. {So repenting one’s past life is a guarantee for one’s life in the future.}d Let us make God our friend: a friend who knows not how to fall away, knows not how to die; who values not wealth but good sense;e who weighs not money but mind. If you love beauty, lo, here is God beautiful above the sons of men (Ps. 44, 3), on whom the angels desire to look (1 Pet. 1, 12). If you love knowledge, in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2, 3). If you a  William alludes to the freedom enjoyed by the soul that is not ‘servile’ but ‘free’ (I, 3, 6): freedom from the bondage of sin. See also II, 22, 1 n. b  Ovid, Trist. 1, 9, 5-6 (also cited at GR 47, 4). c  This sentence seems intrusive, for it introduces the new topic of deserved suffering (for which see I, 3, 7 and I, 7, 4); and ‘All her friends …’ follows well on ‘they may turn into enemies’. d  This sentence is not relevant here. e  There is word play in the contrast of censum and sensum.

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14

ON Lamentations

15

love rest, in Him is ‘the place of rest imperturbable, where love is not forsaken, if itself forsaketh not’.a Love for this world tears the soul apart with diseased longings, before she can enjoy the things she desires. When she does come to enjoy them, penitence follows, and shame too, causing suppuration in a soul that desire had previously inflamed. Thus both before and after his action, his wretched feelings draw a man in different directions. How much better to embrace a love that you do not hate for the trouble it brings with it, or loathe because you are sated by it! Even when friendships are genuine, the soul seeks rest without finding it. They do not stand firm, but turn to flight—and how can the soul cling to what flees? But if by chance some friend does remain true in adversity, and endures evil rather than break faith, of a surety death, that stepmother of worldly felicity, will take him away from us, even though no turn of fortune had been able to disconcert him by its violence. Then comes grief, then the death of the survivor because he has lost the life of the deceased. Happy then the man who loves his friend in God and his enemy for God! The only man who loses no one dear to him is he to whom all are dear, in Him who cannot be lost. But that will suffice. Let me now turn my pen to the allegorical explanation. Weeping she hath wept in the night. ‘Night’ in the holy scriptures is sometimes put for ‘adversity’, as: In the daytime the Lord hath commanded his mercy; and a canticle to him in the night (Ps. 41, 9). For we must welcome the mercy of God, if day, that is the clear weather of good fortune, does at some time shine on us. But it is also a principle of correct reflection that in the night, that is in the thick darkness of adversity, we should rejoice with the canticleb of a cheerful mind, saying: Every thing that thou hast done to us, Lord, thou hast done in true judgment, and the rest (Dan. 3, 31). So let the threats He issues in His power become cause for praise, for what we receive is less than what we deserved. Sometimes, again, ‘night’ stands for sin, as in the saying of the apostle: They that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that are drunk, are drunk in a  b 

Augustine, Conf. 4, 11, 16 (tr. E. B. Pusey). Cf. e.g. Ps. 68, 31.

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6.

7.

I, 2 (5.-9.)

8.

9.

the night (1 Thess. 5, 7). The same apostle rouses sinners from sleep in this kind of night when he says: Rise thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead: and Christ shall enlighten thee (Eph. 5, 14). Also: Awake, ye just, and sin not (1 Cor. 15, 34). Sometimes ‘night’ stands for lack of faith, as in: Now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is passed, and the day will be at hand. Cast off therefore the works of darkness (Rom. 13, 11-12). This is equivalent to saying: It is shameful and disgraceful that we on whom the light of faith shines should like unbelievers wallow in the obscurity of the works of darkness. Now there is darkness interior and exterior. Interior: mental blindness, for nothing is either tolerated by God or sent by the Devil that is more ruinous in a man than this. A man enslaved to this darkness feels no reverence before God or shame before men; and anyone lacking these rushes recklessly into every crime. Now the man who does not, by the grace of God, disperse this darkness will fall into the exterior darkness, of which it is said: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness (Matt. 22, 13). It is called ‘exterior’ because a man pays for his secret wrongdoing in open judgement. It is therefore because her sons are shrouded in these sorts of night that kind mother church laments: either when they are harassed by persecution stirred up by the madness of the Gentiles, or when they are tainted by the wickedness of heresy. And her tears are on her jaws. The ‘jaws’ of the church seem to mean the many churches scattered throughout the world, not separated from the united church, but catholic members and daughters of the catholic mother. For although there is one church, John writes to seven in Revelations.a In these jaws are teeth, that is, the holy preachers who by their exhortations to sinners and unbelievers as it were break them up and cause them to pass into the body of Christ. That is why, in Peter’s vision of the sheet on which all manner of animals were depicted, an oracle from God rang in his ears: Kill and eat (Acts 10, 13). Understanding this aright, he brought Cornelius and the rest of the Gentiles into the body of the church, despite the scorn of ex-Jewish believers, who objecta 

Cf. Rev. 1, 4; Gregory the Great, Moral. 35, 8 (p. 1785).

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ON Lamentations

17

ed to this policy.a Of these teeth Christ says to the church in the Song of Songs: Thy teeth as a flock of sheep, that are shorn, which have come up from the washing (S. of S. 4, 2). For (as I said) by the ‘teeth’ of the church are understood the holy preachers: they as it were soften up the tough parts of the scriptures when they explain them to lesser mortals, just as a mother chews up bread for her children until they are strong enough for more solid fare. These are said to be the flock of shorn sheep which have come up from the washing, because when they remember that they have had their sins washed away by baptism, they are eager to lay down the burdens of the world, so as to strive more freely, because more easily, towards heavenly things. So on the jaws that carry these teeth are tears, because, though the less experienced either do not know or pretend not to know of the sins of offenders, the more expert do understand, and weep for them. For it is written: He that addeth knowledge, addeth also labour, and the heart that understands is a worm for bones (Eccles. 1, 18 + Prov. 14, 30). As to what follows, there is none to comfort her among all them that were dear to her, etc., this is either a case of hyperbaton,b that is a locution that goes beyond what can be believed (for the church has in fact never reached such a pitch of calamity that she did not contain men highly talented and outstanding in eloquence who could comfort her in a crisis, especially as her Master Himself gives a binding promise that He will never let her down: Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world (Matt. 28, 20)), or else a case of whole for part.c That figure is used in Matthew’s Gospel in connection with the Lord: And they that were crucified with him reproached him (Matt. 27, 44), whereas in the Gospel of Luke it is stated as a fact that only one of the two vomited up abuse of the Lord,d with the mentality of a parricide and the daring of a brigand, while the other spoke suppliantly and pleadingly. The same figure was used by the Lord before the Passion: If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself (John 12, Cf. Acts 10, 17-48; 11, 2-3. Rightly ‘hyperbole’. c  The figure called synecdoche; cf. e.g. Isidore, Etym. 1, 37, 13. So too at I, 18, 5. d  Cf. Luke 23, 39-43. a 

b 

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10.

11.

I, 2 (10.-13.)

12.

13.

32). For how very few are, or ever have been, believers as compared with the number of unbelievers! But just as elsewhere we take the meaning to be that the Lord drew to Himself some from all the nations of men,a so hereb we can take it that in the ranks of all those dear to the church there were those who did not comfort her and even persecuted her, the former out of fear, the latter because they had become brutal enemies. So since there was a shortage of comforters and an abundance of persecutors, it is said that all were enemies, and none to comfort. Read the historians. It was, you will find, virtually only Cyprian among Latin writers who blew the trumpet of his eloquence to rouse the minds of warriors to enter the fray on God’s side. While the madness of the Gentiles raged, the Arian heresy had polluted the entire orient; only Athanasius stood up to the emperor even at his fiercest, dissipating error and restoring the truth. The heresy was already taking over the west when Hilary, and a few comrades armed with the same ardent faith, set up a wall, an obstacle that could not be stormed, to protect the church in her peril. Virtue is always a rare quality, by no means common; you may see few or none ready to risk their lives to defend the catholic communion. Who nowadays would assuage the grief of the church by words of comfort, or relieve it by doing good works as an example? Assuredly, as the blessed Gregory says, ‘although there is an audience for the good, there is a shortage of men to speak it’.c All would be well, in some way or other, if those who have taken on the role of preaching brought order to their behaviour by practising holy simplicity, and had subjects who strove to emulate their good lives even if they cannot make them disciples by their preaching. In fact these people are plunderers of the poor and flatterers of the rich. They brood over their wealth, burdening their bellies with food and their purses with coin. They make a display of honourWilliam seems to have awkwardly conflated two ideas: a) we must understand the passage from John to mean that the Lord ‘drew’ some, not all; and b) in other passages of the Bible we are told that the Lord drew some, not all (the reference being apparently to the famous phrase at Matt. 20, 16 = 22, 14). b  i.e. in our passage of Lamentations. c  Gregory the Great, In euang. 17, 3. a 

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18

ON Lamentations

19

able titles while forgetting why they hold office. So, filled full in worldly terms, but empty in the eyes of God, they drive themselves and their followers headlong to hell like enemies. There is none to comfort the church among all them that were dear to her. Friends in appearance, who are in fact covert enemies, have despised and rejecteda her. But according to the moral meaning the divine prophet advises the soul conscious of her sins what she ought to do. Let her buy joy for aeons at the cost of a few days’ pain, and by profitable bodily torments pay for the harmful pleasures of the heart. With tears that will perish let her buy happiness that will last. Let her wail, for she has done things worthy of wailing, in accordance with the words: Every night I will wash my bed: I will water my couch with my tears (Ps. 6, 7). Let her weep so that she may laugh for eternity, according to the words: Blessed are ye that weep now: for you shall laugh (Luke 6, 21). Yet it seems to me that the prophet is not so much laying down what the soul should do as showing what she is doing. It is natural, and laid down by God’s eternal law, that a mind with a bad conscience should be a torment to itself. For, as I have said elsewhere,b it anticipates for itself the hell that will come late in the day, and the troubled mind suffers its own evil genius. Proceed it may with head held high, swollen with fat and mincing in step. Yet it carries around with it its own punishments, and can form a picture of an underworld as already before its eyes. Weeping therefore the soul weeps in the night, because she has to grope a way through the dense darkness of misery, and blinded by evil habits cannot escape into the breezes of heavenly light. And her tears are on her jaws. You must understand by the ‘jaws’ of the soul her rational impulses, for by those jaws all irrationality is ground up and digestedc into reason. Her tears are on her jaws so that she may by using reason weep for what she has done contrary to reason. For it is a mark of reason that the created should be servant of God the creator, and not go beyond the limits The verb is uncertain. Perhaps cf. GR 162, 4. See CC CM 244, pp. 318-319. c  i.e. ground up so as to be digested. a 

b 

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14.

15.

I, 2 (13.) – I, 3 (1.)

16.

1.

of nature. Anyone who violates nature distresses God his creator, and sin is justly punished precisely because it tries to distort into injustice a nature that was created just. Accordingly, in the last hour, when the material body is given up for dead and the soul, now laid bare, has the benefit of eyes of her own,a her irrational impulses, which she thought dear while they supplied her with the allurements of pleasure, do not comfort her, but rather afflict her, gnawing away at her ulcerated conscience. They despise her, mock her, and abandon her—those impulsesb that so far as she could she nurtured within and put into practice without. How much more beautiful, then, how much more conducive to the attainment of glory, that while we are healthy, or at least while we yet breathe, we should ourselves renounce pleasures, for fear they ride in triumph over us, for fear demons cackle and cackle! Furthermore, if we care to connect the last versec with the dead body of a man, nothing is more obvious or more true. For friends scatter and acquaintances are ashamed when the soul has taken to flight and the body has rotted. They shudder to look upon it now, and are frightened to touch it. Mercy now is thought to consist in granting a quicker burial, in digging a deeper grave. The closer a man had been to the deceased in his lifetime, the more he is apt to show this kind of pity. 1, 3. Ghimel is translated ‘fullness’. It is attached to these versesd to show that the prophet here treated more fully what he had previously touched on only sparingly. For it is an overwhelming culmination of distress if, after the destruction of the city, after the exaction of taxes and after constant tears, the citizens finally experience the miseries of captivity. It lightens calamity for a man to die in his homeland, to be able at least to have his ashes scattered on its ruins even if he cannot repair them by his industry. But it is the extreme of hardship, after losing one’s liberty, to have to sigh for one’s native soil, to try to make oneself understood in a  At the point of death, the soul, freed of the body, can see as it did not see before. Cf. Prudentius, Hamartigenia 944-945. b  Reading quos. But perhaps the transmitted quas is right: ‘those allurements.’ c  See above, § 1 n. d  See I, 2, 1 n.

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an unknown tongue, and to put up with the arrogance of foreigna lords, whose anger you shudder at, and whose favour you cannot trust. Juda hath removed her dwelling place because of her affliction and the greatness of her bondage. The burden of constant payments of tribute, imposed by the disdainful Chaldeans on the remaining Israelites as if they were slaves, persuaded the unfortunate people to leave their ancient haunts and go into exile. Necessity contrived a remedy—but for them it proved a disaster, as we learn in what follows: She hath dwelt among the nations, and she hath found no rest. Discrepancy in religious practice disturbed the peace and aroused discord; where they had hoped for peace and quiet, they found turmoil. An unfamiliar religion brings unpopularity on its adherents, and those who do not share a belief are swift to accuse what they are not moved to worship. So they either undermine it so far as they can by their actions, or (if all else fails) harass it verbally. All her persecutors have taken her in the midst of straits. There is no doubt that the neighbouring peoples were hostile to the Jews, because, as I have said, of the clash of religions. For what the revered apostle said of the Christians, We are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men (1 Cor. 4, 9), could (I should be justified in thinking) have been said of the Jews at that time. A Jew was always pointed at amidst all the thousands around him, because of his devotion to unfamiliar rites. Hence Lucan: ‘And Judaea, given over to the rites of an uncertain god’.b Difference of ritual caused discord, competition for glory produced ill will. So it came about that the Moabites and the Ammonites and the rest of the peoples around about, hearing of the expedition of the Babylonians against the Israelites, were glad to join in, either to gratify their old hatred for the nation by taking new plunder, or to I have avoided translating words with the root barb- by ‘barbarian’, ‘barbarous’ etc. except where cruelty is clearly in question. b  Lucan 2, 592-593. a 

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3.

I, 3 (1.-5.)

4.

5.

avoid damaging themselves in the eyes of their Chaldean masters by failing to speed to their aid against the enemy common to them all. So all her persecutors have taken her in the midst of straits, some coming from a distance, some plotting treachery close at hand. To examine the allegory: ‘Judah’ means ‘confession’. The truth of the name has worked against those who use it most, those ‘who’ (as we read in Revelations) ‘say they are Jews, and are not’ (Rev. 3, 9). For, as the blessed John says in a letter, he who does not confess the Son, the same hath not the Father (1 John 2, 23). For God the Son is said to be coeternal with God the Father precisely because the eternal Father has always (it is believed) been called Father. But neither is the name Judah suitable for those Christians who confess that they know God, but in their works deny Him.a The name ‘confession’ fits only the catholic church, in which faith does not war with morals and morals do not differ from faith. The church removed her dwelling place because of her affliction and the greatness of her bondage, when, offended by the hardness of those who neglected God and were slaves to their lusts, she said: To you it behoved us first to speak the kingdom of God: but because you rejected it, behold we turn to the Gentiles (Acts 13, 46). Therefore she dwelt among the nations: that is, she lived a delightful life, charmed by the readiness to believe of thoseb who drank in the faith with thirsty hearts. But there too envy plucked her in the flower; the peace she hoped for was disturbed, and the edicts of the Roman emperors tore her to pieces, until God and her own indomitable constancy put an end to her sufferings. All her persecutors have taken her in the midst of straits. Three plagues persecuted the church of God, so keenly that her vigour was sapped and she scarce seemed capable of getting it back: Jews, Gentiles, heretics. The Jews reaped the first shoots of the nascent church when they were scarcely in flower. The Gentiles cut her back and almost killed her when she had already grown strong and was on the verge of producing fruit. It was like a rose forcing its way out of the thorns as it strives skywards: the church grew a  b 

Cf. Tit. 1, 16. Feminine (quarum): i.e. the nations, the Gentiles.

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tall during the persecutions; but then heretics (enemies the more destructive because they were nearer at hand) clouded her over in such a whirlwind, and so damaged her, that the more simple were in doubt what to believe and what not. Further, in the moral sense, the soul removes her dwelling place ‘because of her affliction and the greatness of her bondage’ when temptations afflict her and, fleeing from the service of God, she becomes a handmaiden to lusts. And so of the removal that led to her falling from paradise into the woes of her present exile is not enough: she finds her calamities redoubled, her miseries piled up. What had been imposed on her because of the transgression of the first of mankind turns into pleasure, chosen willingly because of the delight it brings. It is the mark of a free man, if oppressed by circumstances and necessity, to spring forth in his minda and scorn his bondage. But it is the mark of a servile mind gladly to make itself over to slavery and voluntarily to acknowledge its client status. Yet, amidst all this, man, serf of so many masters, has the hardihood to utter the lie that he is free-born, that he has some great endeavour in mind, especially if fortune goes his way and knowledge is available. In fact, however, he is merely the slave of many monstrous masters, dwelling ‘among the nations’, that is, either the confused mass of temptations or men who live like heathen. Nor does he ‘find rest’ while he is always prone to lapse, either because demons press upon him with their temptations, or because of men: some impelling him by words, for evil communications corrupt good manners,b others leading him on by their example, for nothing is easier than to imitate the lives of those whose fortune you look up to. Wherefore, under the influence of these two factors, the soul diverges from good and removes her dwelling place into servitude to vice. The result is that on the body’s last day all her persecutors take her in the midst of straits. Those who had once been smooth persuaders turn into fearful persecutors. Those who once used covert lies to suggest evil, clothing monstrous vices with a colour of virtues, a  b 

That is, mentally to cast aside his chains; cf. I, 1, 10 ‘sprung from his chains’. Cf. 1 Cor. 15, 33.

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6.

7.

I, 3 (5.-9.)

8.

9.

now drag to punishment where once they lured into wrongdoing. When theya come into public view, there will be nowhere to hide. Absolutely all sins, of every kind, committed from childhood to old age, will confront the guilty. No persecution is more choice, no strait more dire, than to be tormented by conscience, so that what you suffer you know you suffer for good reason. These straits of the lost soul the Lord Jesus Christ signalled by His tearsb and taught by His words, under the guise of Jerusalem: If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a palisade about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side, and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee: and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone: because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation (Luke 19, 42-44). For while the mercy of almighty God keeps anger balanced long in suspense, and delays wreaking vengeance, the soul lies back amid her vices and deludes herself that she is at peace. She does not keep before her eyes the straits that may take her in the future, but pretends not to know them. But the last days shall come upon her when her enemies shall cast a palisade about her. A palisade is so constructed that the enemy can be seen through the chinks between the posts and stakes, but not fully guarded against. So the soul, bared of the body, will see her enemies without being able to flee from them; her punishment will be aggravated by the terror caused by that appalling sight. And those will compass her round, and straiten her on every side, who will oppress her with evils extending to both word and deed, but also with inconstant thoughts. She will then herself be beaten flat to the ground, when the body she used as a combatant in the attainment of vice is laid low and crumbles into dust. And on that day will perish all her thoughts—that is what is meant by her ‘children’ (for just as children come forth from seed, so thoughts are formed from within the mind), and by the fitting together of stones (for raise a barrier of a  b 

The demons (the ‘enemies’ of § 9). Cf. Luke 19, 41.

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vices to shut off the enclosure of her hardened heart from God’s precepts, and pile evil on evil so as to make the illicit notions of the mind bring evil habit to birth). All this the soul deserves to suffer, because she did not know the time of her visitation. For now is the acceptable time, now the day of salvation.a Now God is either punishing us with whips or binding us to Him by favours. The Father in His great mercy leaves nothing undone that might stimulate obedient sons to love Him and recall them to their lost heritage, nothing undone that might encourage defiant slaves to fear Him and bring them back to health of mind. Let us therefore love our Father when He smiles, fear our Lord when He threatens; for a servant’s fear often makes progress, and matures into a son’s love. The mind’s reason and the abundance of calamity both urge us to seize the day, and to win the prize assigned to virtue; but so too does Solomon’s pronouncement: Whatsoever thy hand is able to do, do it earnestly: for neither knowledge nor reason is in hell, whither thou art hastening (Eccles. 9, 10). As the blessed Gregory says: ‘If there is any joy in the present time, it should be so handled that the bitterness of the judgement to come is never forgotten, so that, the terrified mind being pierced by fear of the final vengeance, there may be an end both to the joy of the present and to the anger that is to come.’ b 1, 4. Daleth means ‘of tables’. This makes it clear that those who were overwhelmed by the tribulations detailed in this verse had broken the commandments of the law. For it was on stone tablesc that was inscribed the law of God that failed to break the stony hearts of the Israelites and turn them to good. Here then ends the first ‘connection’, made up of four letters: ‘The teaching of the house was the fullness of the tables’, because in the tables was fully contained what sufficed for the teaching of the house of the Lord, that is the people with faith: namely, the two exalted precepts on which depends the whole law and the prophets.d BeCf. 2 Cor. 6, 2. Gregory the Great, In euang. 39, 3 (who wrote not terminetur, ‘ended’, but temperetur, ‘moderated’). c  i.e. tablets. d  Cf. Matt. 22, 37-40. a 

b 

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I, 3 (9.) – I, 4 (4.)

2.

3.

4.

cause the Jews in their stubbornness scorned these precepts, they deservedly incurred the penalties described metaphorically in the following verse. The ways of Sion mourn, because there are none that come to the solemn feast. Sion was the citadel of the city of Jerusalem, over which its lofty ramparts loomed threateningly. Its height is witnessed to by its name, which means ‘look-out’: from it can be seen the whole district round about. It is now called the Tower of David. It is appropriate then that the ways of the whole region are metaphorically said to mourn, for infrequent are the feet that tread them: that is what the wretched inhabitants mourned, supposing any chanced to survive. On the roads that led to the city, where previously dense crowds of people in long columns got in each other’s way, now only the occasional traveller was to be seen. They had no leisure to mourn for their kin: when there is common cause for grief, it seems unreasonable to weep for private woes. Instead they lamented the public desolation, the more sorely because there were none that came to the solemn feast. People failed to come out of fear of the enemy, afraid they might meet with death in their quest for joy, and pay with their blood for thinking they should not give up their customary duties even at so unpropitious a time: for it would have been easy, however inhuman, for the savage barbarians to pollute the very sacrifices with the blood of the sacrificers. Alternatively, they were tired of grieving, for a tale out of time is like music in mourning.a The memory of past gatherings made people sigh. Into their minds came the sacred songs that the psalmists, and those whose duty it was, used to sing in harmony at the customary festivals. But the cause of the grief, which he had touched on in general terms, now develops at greater length. All her gates are broken down, her priests sigh; her virgins are in mourning-clothes, and she is oppressed with bitterness. Cf. Ecclus. 22, 6. William seems to mean that the people were reluctant to enter the city because to do so would only renew their grief. a 

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The destruction of the gates offered easy access to the enemy. But the citizens themselves were afraid to enter: now that the barriers were down, they did not dare to tarry in the city even on feast days.a Hence the priests, seeing the pitiable slaughter of the people, to whom they were accustomed to show a father’s kindness, were too frightened of the enemy to give voice to their pain; but they groaned, even if only silently. Hence too the dark clothes of the virgins, in keeping with the public mourning—for it was thought improper to go out in elegant flowing robes; vacillating and scared, they visualised loss of their chastity as the sequel to the loss of their property. Hence, finally, the fact that the whole community of Israelites was embittered by the afflictions confounding them like this as individuals. In the allegorical sense, Sion, which is translated ‘look-out’, can be applied to holy church, either because she has raised her head in triumph over all lack of faith, and beaten back and foiled all the assaults of the Devil by faith and by the application of reason, or because from the look-out place of her teaching can be seen everything that should harm or benefit her citizens, so that they can flee from the one and rally to the other. The prophetic Isaiah interpreted for us (as it were) the mystery behind the name, when he said to Sion: Thy God shall reign! The voice of thy watchmen:b they have lifted up their voice, they shall praise together (Isa. 52, 7-8). To Sion is said in the Song of Songs in the Bride’s words: Thy neck is as the tower of David, which is built with bulwarks: a thousand bucklers hang upon it, all the armour of valiant men (S. of S. 4, 4). By the ‘neck’ of the church you should understand her teaching, because, just as the throat is in the neck and the voice is in the throat, so in the church are scriptures and in the scriptures are teachings. Teachings are signified by ‘bucklers’ and ‘bulwarks’. Both are defence-works against the enemy, though not in the same way. For we turn bucklers in any direction we choose, but bulwarks are fixed immovably to the wall. Thus in Holy Scripture The citizens are thought of as lurking in the vicinity of the city (see § 2), and frightened to enter it for any length of time, even to celebrate a feast-day. b  speculatorum; cf. specula, ‘look-out’. a 

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I, 4 (4.-7.)

7.

there are some lessons in behaviour, which by the grace of God we can usea at our discretion, some in faith, which we cannot. For example, when I hear that Moses was gentle,b Joseph chaste, Job patient, I can respond to their examples by trying to imitate the pattern of their virtues. But when I read that Moses used a rod to part the sea,c that Joseph interpreted riddling dreams,d that Job swiftly recovered his old prosperity after the plague,e to be at homef with such miracles is far from being my forte. Thus the former are adopted with ease, the latter with difficulty. Yet both are for our protection, the former in respect of our behaviour, the latter in respect of our faith, for theyg do much to inspire us to embrace the readiness to believe shown by those whom God thinks worthy of such miracles. Observe in any case that by a finite numberh is represented the infinite ‘armour of valiant men’: however strongly the Enemy assails us, Holy Scripture supplies considered remedies for the extinguishing of his fiery darts. Suppose that someone’s bile is kindled and he seethes with envy at the good fortune of his brother; let him listen to the words: By the envy of the devil, death came into the world (Wisd. 2, 24). Another looks down with arrogant disdain on those beneath him; let him listen to the words: Why is earth and ashes proud? (Ecclus. 10, 9). A third feeds his eyes on the beauty of a woman’s figure, without worrying that this may shipwreck his chastity; let him hear the words: Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with This seems to be the meaning, though habere (‘have’) is very vague. Cf. Num. 12, 3. c  Cf. Exod. 14, 21. d  Cf. Gen. 41, 1-36. e  Cf. Job 42, 10-16. f  A guess at the meaning. William’s usual sense for spatiari (e.g. VW 1, 3, 2) is ‘spread oneself in writing (or speaking) about’, and he might mean here that his eloquence is not up to describing such miraculous occurrences (cf. GP 267, 5 ‘facultas eloquii’, ‘power of speech’, 149, 3: both concerning miracles). But there seems no reason why he should feel called upon to do anything of the sort. The context suggests rather that he feels not up to believing them. g  i.e. the latter. h  A thousand. a 

b 

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her in his heart (Matt. 5, 28). And other similar instances—but I love brevity, and let them go, in order to return to my exposition. The ways of Sion mourn, because there are none that come to the solemn feast. By the ‘ways’ of holy church are understood the holy preachers. If we tread in their footsteps, we never diverge from the road of perpetual salvation. For just as the shepherds of the church are themselves subordinate to Christ the supreme shepherd, who said: I am the good shepherd (John 10, 11), so there are ways in Him who said: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me (John 14, 6). These preachers feel for their subjects, and lament with redoubled pity when they see them listless, failing to hasten to the solemn joys of the house of the Lord, of which is said: Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, O Lord: they shall praise thee for ever and ever (Ps. 83, 5); and again: Appoint a solemn day, with shady boughs, even to the horn of the altar (Ps. 117, 27). For the prophet advises us to ‘appoint a solemn day’ by correcting our behaviour and practising a crowd of virtues: there is joy for the angels of God upon one sinner that doth penance.a And this ‘even to the horn of the altar’, that is, to the end of life. We have in our minds, unless we pretend we do not, unless we grow base, an altar on which to offer ourselves to God a holy sacrifice, living, pleasing unto God, our reasonable service.b Nor is it surprising if good ends are not fulfilled when in fact a beginning is scarcely made on them, as in the following Her gates are broken down. The ‘gates’ of life, the ‘gates’ of holy church, are the beginnings of good works, on which we go forth with fair prospects when we set before ourselves the correction of our behaviour. Of them the psalmist says: Open ye to me the gates of justice: I will go in to them, and give praise to the Lord (Ps. 117, 19). For it gives hope of future progress …c A man has made a great step towards salvation if he has altogether bidden farewell to his vices—or at least given them a holiday. Hence the saying ‘A start is half the whole’.d Cf. Luke 15, 7 and 10. Cf. Rom. 12, 1. c  The sentence is corrupt (see CC CM 244, p. 320); there is mention of confession of sins. d  Cf. Horace, Epist. 1, 2, 40. a 

b 

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8.

9.

I, 4 (7.-12.)

10.

11.

12.

Next comes: Her priests sigh; her virgins are in mourning-clothes. It is true that every Christian is enrolled under the name of priest, as in For thou hast made us to God a kingdom and priests (Rev. 5, 10), and also You are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood (1 Pet. 2, 9). But the men who properly go under this name are those who perform consecrated works and send the incense of sacred prayers to heaven. And though the whole church is a virgin, because she keeps faith with one man and mars her purity by no heresy, the name is more intimately attached to those who are conscious of no stain and preserve mind and body unsullied. By ‘priests’ then we should understand sanctity, by ‘virgins’ chastity. Hence the Lord says: Let your loins be girt, and lamps burning in your hands (Luke 12, 35), meaning by the girding of loins the restraints put on lustfulness, and by burning lamps in hands the brilliant works of virtue. If these two come to a peaceful agreement between them, they advance the soul on her journey to heaven. But Gregory pronounces: ‘Chastity carries no weight without good works, or good works without chastity.’a So priests groan when sanctity grows cold, when the ability to do good works perishes. Virgins are in mourning-clothes when the wholeness that pleases the eyes of men looks soiled to the gaze of the Judge within. It is only right then that preachers grieve, only right that the church is oppressed with bitterness, when good works are begun fearfully, practised coldly, and completed not at all. The moral sense too may be understood in the same way, at least if a few words are altered. Holy preachers, who groan the more deeply the greater their insight, grieve that the soul, which God raised up to be a look-out place for the virtues, has fallen headlong into this wretchedness because vices made her path so uneven. For man when he was in honour did not understand: he hath been compared to senseless beasts, and made like to them (Ps. 48, 13 = 21). And so man gave up the honour of being the image of God and of being made equal to the heavenly virtues, and fell instead into the likeness of irrational animals. For what in her essence was fashioned to love and seek what is heavenly is overa 

Gregory the Great, In euang. 13, 1.

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whelmed by earthly lusts and carnal desires, and is tossed around by irrational impulses when she should have enjoyed the use of reason. There is no bestial impulse that is not to be found in a man after the entrance of sin; and what is praiseworthy in a beast is to be deprecated in a man, because the beast is acting according to its nature, the man contrary to his. Therefore when a soul is wallowing in miseries like this, the holy bewail her, because not even after experiencing calamity does she long for the solemn delights of her native land. Their laments are justified, for her gates are broken down, the ‘gates’ of the soul being the senses of the body; when they are broken open by the violence of vice, the battalions of every evil creep, or force their way, into the soul through them. As a result, whatever in her was thought to be holy or chaste either falls into disuse through neglect or altogether perishes through soiling: so much so that, for all the melancholy pallor of those who toil away, scarcely anyone ever attains the prize. It is not surprising then if the soul is oppressed with bitterness, either from penitence, or as a penalty exacted by the conscience. For there is no heavier punishment, as I said earlier,a than the fire that devours a mind with a bad conscience, where there is conflict between the fear of not being willing to start and the distress of not being able to complete.b One man is caught in the toils of bad habit; another, measuring the difficulty of his route against his own frailty, gives up the struggle of his own volition. But this contest will go on being evenly balanced until God’s grace attends us and puts an end to our battle by a happy peace. Let us strive then not to despair, for He gives us confidence who said: Ask, and you shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened to you; seek, and it shall be given to you.c Before that He had propounded the riddled of the man who in the middle of the night Cf. I, 2, 14. William seems to be illogical in speaking of a conflict of these emotions. Contrast VW 1, 12, 3 (conflict of love and fear). c  Cf. Matt. 7, 7; Luke 11, 9; John 16, 24. d  Really a symbolic parable (Luke 11, 5-8). But William uses the language of Ezek. 17, 2. a 

b 

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13.

14.

I, 4 (12.) – I, 5 (1.)

15.

1.

gave his friend what he asked, rising not because he was his friend but because of his importunity. ‘Importunate work conquers all.’a Nothing is so hard that it is not lightened by practice. ‘It is baseborn spirits that are shown up by fear.’ b Therefore let the hope of divine aid baffle fear. Let the recompense of an eternal prize help you to keep up your labours. Let importunity deserve what chill charity does not. It is true that, as scripture says, a heavy yoke is upon the children of Adam, from the day of their coming out of their mother’s womb, until the day of their return into their mother (Ecclus. 40, 1). But the yoke putrifieth at the presence of the oil (Isa. 10, 27). For when the sweet warmth of the Holy Spirit descends upon some inveterate sin, the hardness dissolves in penitence: it is softened and snaps. But when we free ourselves from the yoke of the Devil, we take in exchange the yoke to carry which is the mark of the highest freedom. Take my yoke upon you, as says, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls. For my yoke is sweet and my burden light (Matt. 11, 29-30). How pleasant it is to bow to a yoke that is gentle, a yoke to be freed of which is never fitting or profitable, a yoke that leads lightly to enduring delight! But how wretched to seek in affliction after pleasures that will perish, to hold on to them with suspicion, to lose them in agony! 1, 5. He. Her adversaries are become her lords,c her enemies are enriched, because the Lord hath spoken against her for the multitude of her iniquities; her children are led into captivity from the face of the oppressor. He means ‘that’.d But according to the view of our forebears an addition is needed to complete the sense: ‘that is the law’, so as to make it clear that the fullness of the tables spoken of in the first ‘connection’ was the law. Those who persisted in breaking it were by the just judgement of God reduced to being the tail though Cf. Vergil, Georg. 1, 145-146. Vergil, Aen. 4, 13 (tr. R. G. Austin). c  Lit. ‘at the head’. d  ista is ‘that in your direction’, haec ‘this here’; both are used in the second conexio (see I, 1143). For the first see I, 4, 1 (I, 473-474). a 

b 

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they had been at the head.a For it is obvious to those who read history books that Jerusalem was the head of the regions round about: Palestine and Arabia fell under her sway, and Syria paid tribute to the more powerful of her kings. But then, because the evil behaviour of her people necessitated it, the justice of God, which had previously been her protector, turned against her, and fortune tipped in favour of her foes. They, not content with mere victory, took away rich booty as well, piling up treasure for themselves at the expense of others’ suffering. As a result they relaxed, and became high and haughty. It mattered nothing to them if their rapacity spurred on their greed by taking spoils every day; they did not weigh the troubles of the conquered nation according to divine judgement, but marked them up as gain of their own. They lined up the children and led them off into captivity, so that those innocents learned the shame of being clients before getting any pleasure from life. What more pitiable than that children of free birth should forget to what status they had been born, and that the years of their life grew with the years of their servitude? But if we also look more carefully at the meaning of the words, ‘the children are led into captivity: from the face of the oppressor’ can be seen to mean that they were not just led, but driven ever onwards, like a spiritless herd, with goads, or blows from the butt end of a spear, or a whip of some kind. But to prevent us thinking that all this befell the Israelites for no reason and without their deserving it, the cause is not passed over: indeed it is carefully impressed upon us in the words: Because the Lord hath spoken against her for the multitude of her iniquities. One thing is linked to another, resulting in the rhetorical figure called ‘climax’ or ‘gradation’.b The multitude of iniquities provoked the anger of God. The anger of God was the withdrawal of His help. The withdrawal of His help meant that the calamity of captivity capped their woes. To help them steer clear of it, the Lord had spoken to them for generation after generation: prophets, drawing their inspiration from God, had made their a  b 

Cf. Deut. 28, 13 and 44 Cf. e.g. Isidore, Etym. 2, 21, 4.

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3.

I, 5 (1.-4.)

4.

pronouncements for the benefit of posterity, in the words they spoke and in the books they wrote. The price they paid for their watchfulness had been death at the hands of unbelievers. What an appalling crime—to misrepresent the assiduousness of divine prophets, and turn it to their destruction! It counted against men of the common peoplea that they kept wakeful guard for their country, that they wished to snatch its citizens from danger. So, because the Jews did not place a limit on their vices and did not apply their minds to believing them,b their hopes and their substance perished to a frightful and pitiable extent. But allegorically the adversaries of the church became her lords when the persecution grew red-hot, and the madness of the heathen had become so violent that the church looked to be on the point of annihilation—had not the favour of God’s peace calmed the times. This happened more than once. Because of the flood of outrages perpetrated by Christians the hand of the Gentiles prevailed, proclaiming hateful persecution or conspiring to make war on us. It is of course a sign of the great compassion that God deigns to show us that He does not let sinners do as they like, but puts an obstacle in the path of their mad onrush. We see things differently, for the eye of our reason has been damaged by the dust of a mass of crime, and we do not take into consideration what is right, but only what pleases us. But that skilled Doctor, who knows all that is in our interest, cuts some things back to the quick, whilst calmly turning a blind eye to others. But He does not let any sin go unpunished. Since justice is defined as duly to give each person what he deserves, and as He is just and loves justice, He would be acting contrary to justice if He ignored and left unpunished any wrong deed. Either, then, man will punish his own sin by a temporaryc penance, or God will punish it with a perpetual penalty.

Apparently meaning the prophets. i.e. the prophets. But the text is not secure (see CC CM 244, p. 320). c  It is hard to be sure how to translate temporanea: a) in time, i.e. in this world, or b) temporary (giving the expected contrast with ‘perpetual’), or even c) opportune. a 

b 

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Let us therefore come before His face with confession.a Let us lament before the Lord, who made and re-made us, the Lord who, if we are genuine b will save us for ever. Let us blot out vigorously what we have done wrongly. Let us comfort ourselves that we shall be forgiven if we cease from wrongdoing. Let us contrive agonies for our flesh, so that it may fight for us to achieve penitence as perfectly as it serves us in the cause of wantonness. Let us act before God judges us, for there is judgment without mercy to him that hath not done mercy (Jas. 2, 13). Mercy is first of all shown in one’s own case, secondly in that of one’s neighbour. Hence it is said: Son, have pity on thy own soul, pleasing God (Ecclus. 30, 24). However generous a man may be towards others, he is impious if he is cruel to his own soul by not doing her good. It is utter barbarity to be beneficent to others but cruel to yourself. If we are to be punished, it is better to undergo torture by our own choice, not that of others. We shall be more sparing in subjecting our flesh to torment than those fell hirelings, set to torture us for eternity, will be in dealing with our soul. If, the apostle says, we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged by the Lord (1 Cor. 11, 31) But, as I started to say,c the enemies of the church seemed stronger, and rich too thanks to the harm they did her, at a time when they were plundering all the Christians they could and bringing them back to their ports.d Her children were led into captivity, too, when ‘children in sense’, of little faith,e yielded to unbelief under the stress of torture. To people like this the apostle says: Do not become children in sense: but in malice be children (1 Cor. 14, 20); and again: As unto little ones in Christ, I gave you milk to drink, not meat (1 Cor. 3, 1-2). Equally, they gave in to winning words, when, trading on kinship or affection, wife persuaded husband, or friend persuaded friend, Cf. Ps. 94, 2. Or perhaps better: ‘unless we shut our eyes to Him.’ For nisi dissimul- cf. I, 570 and III, 1641. c  See I, 5, 4. d  William imagines the persecutors as pirates (for whom cf. I, 10, 9), plundering Christians and taking them back home to be sold into slavery. e  Cf. e.g. Matt. 16, 8. a 

b 

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5.

6.

I, 5 (5.-8.)

7.

8.

to do things that (they alleged) would benefit them. We prove this to our cost every day: those who are not broken by fear are weakened by luxury or deceived by persuasion. ‘A mean comrade,’ as Seneca says, ’rubbed his rust off on a comrade who was pure of heart.’a But why the Gentiles dare to do such things, or Christians put up with them, is made clear in the words Because the Lord hath spoken against her for the multitude of her iniquities. For evil behaviour, as I have said,b delivers the church of God over to be the sport of the pagans: though of course the Judge, with good and kindly intent, draws back His poor servants when they are on the point of falling headlong. That these things would befall the church the Lord told David, when He said: I will establish the kingdom of your son for ever. If he commit any iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men. But my mercy I will not take away from him (2 Kgs. 7, 13-15). We, who are the descendants of the faith of David, understand this to refer to the kingdom of Christ, that is the church. Fortunate the patriarch to have Christ as his descendant! And Christ did not disdain to recognise Himself as David’s son when the blind man cried: Jesus son of David, have mercy on me (Mark 10, 47; Luke 18, 38). He recognised,c and stopped, and poured light into those empty orbs. But if anyone should argue that these words were said of the carnal descendants of David, he will surely be wasting his efforts, for his kingdom came to an end long ago, and the mercy of God, offended by its wrongdoings, departed from it. In the moral sense, the enemies of the soul are the demons disquieted by unhappy envy when they see her strive towards heaven, trying to ascend to the place from which they were ousted because of their pride. For this reason they fetch out against her all the wiles they know, and deploy all the strength they have, anxious by her ruin to bring relief from the fires that plague them. For it is characteristic of the envious to think it a comfort for their own ills when they see their rival subject to their own disasters. So they Seneca, Epist. 7, 7. Cf. (as it seems) I, 5, 4. c  i.e. that he was being addressed in these words. a 

b 

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press their assault, and by their wickedness (and what can be as wicked as demons?) attack the soul, yes, attack her and sometimes defeat her. They are many, but she is one; they are veterans, she a tiro; they are clever, she lacks intelligence. She deserves to fall into their hands because she listens to those who try to persuade her, even though she is well aware that they are her enemies. The order of nature is thus inverted: adversaries are become lords, ruling over the creature whom the Creator should be ruling, if only she,a mindful of her own origin, had thought it better to control her natural ‘numbers’,b the rational affections, and the harmony of virtues. The demons are enriched too, because they are the happier the more good things the soul loses. Further, her children are led into captivity because the demons drag captive into their power her childish and foolish thoughts, and sing glad songs of triumph over them. Of these thoughts is said: Blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock (Ps. 136, 9) This was glossed by the blessed Benedict as follows: ‘One who has rejected the malicious Devil from the sight of his heart when he was urging certain things upon him, and brought his efforts to nothing, took his little thoughts and dashed them against Christ.’c But the soul is said to suffer these humiliations for the multitude of her iniquities because what causes a subsequent sin is of course often punishment for a preceding one, as we read in the psalm: Add thou iniquity upon their iniquity: so that they come not into thy justice (Ps. 68, 28), and in the apostle: As they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient (Rom. 1, 28). Let them therefore go their way, devoted to this world, and in defiance of the apostle’s command let them be drunk on wine, wherein is luxury (Eph. 5, 18), and, to quote the saying of the foolish in the book of Wisdom, let them crown themselves with roses, before they be withered: let no meadow escape their riot.d The day is coming, it is coming and not long distant (for nothing is long The (created) soul. A phrase occurring in John the Scot, Periphys. 3 (p. 42, 1177-1179). c  Reg. Mag. THS 24. d  Cf. Wisd. 2, 8. a 

b 

70

9.

10.

I, 5 (8.-13.)

11.

12.

13.

in this world), on which the flesh that now wantons will crumble to ashes, on which the souls that now swella with proud impulses against God will be tormented. But happy and blessed indeed is the soul in whose way the severity of divine mercy sets a barrier to prevent her falling completely into the depths of evil. Happy the man to whom the Lord says: I will hedge up thy ways with thorns, and I will stop them up with a wall, and thou shalt not overtakeb thy lovers (Hos. 2, 6-7). By lovers the chastity of the mind is overthrown—by haters, rather, who drag their loved ones to punishment. So that they are not overtaken, the Lord hedges up the ways of the soul with thorns when, after wrongs have already been committed, He is everywhere at hand, mercifully cruel, and sprinkling all His sweetness on the most bitter offences. He stops with a wall when every impulse to attain pleasures falls away, all intent is thwarted. Then the soul is happy to be conquered; she is unhappy only if she conquers. For it often happens that, tired of the difficulties everywhere besetting his path, a man refuses to go on looking for what he cannot reach. Of his own free will he starts to disdain what he was once loath to lose. He feels ashamed to chase after what he cannot catch or what displeases him when he has caught it. The mind that is not servile thinks before it acts, in case it does something of which it might repent and becomes a cause of shame to itself. It makes no difference how God practises this artifice of His, so long as the wandering soul is recalled to a settled state, the wantoning soul to moderation. There is no settled state, no moderation, until one arrives at Him to whom return all things that have been tired out by their own irrational impulses. I know many men who have taken the hint from troubled times or a distaste for secular affairs, and escaped from wicked men.c They say with the apostle The world is crucified to me, and I William seems to borrow this word from Horace (Epist. 1, 3, 14), where it is used of literary bombast (see C. O. Brink on Ars poet. 97). He uses it in II, 239 of bubbles. b  The Vulgate has adpreh-; William gives compreh- at I, 2121 also (contrast the adaptation at III, 470), and the meaning he intended is not quite certain. c  That is, from the secular world. a 

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to the world (Gal. 6, 14), and Whilst we are judged, we are chastised by the Lord, that we be not condemned with this world (1 Cor. 11, 32); and with the psalmist O God, thou hast cast us off, and hast destroyed us; thou hast been angry, and hast had mercy on us (Ps. 59, 3), and a little further on Thou hast shewn thy people hard things; thou hast made us drink the wine of sorrow. Thou hast given a warning to them that fear thee: that they may flee from before the bow (Ps. 59, 5-6). For it is a temporal punishment that one should flee from before the bow, that is, beware of the day of judgement. Just as the bow kills with an arrow that comes unexpectedly from afar, so the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night;a therefore we must be prepared, because at what hour we know not the Son of man will come. The psalmist too menaces us with this bow, when in another passage (Ps. 7, 13-14) he says to the stubborn: Except you will be converted, he will brandish his sword (that is, he will threaten temporal penalties that can be seen and avoided); he hath bent his bow, and made it ready (that is, unless these penalties make you come to your senses, he will strike you suddenly and unexpectedly, though now he puts up with your behaviour calmly). And in it he hath prepared the instruments of death, for temporal scourges sometimes chasten for her good, while future ones plunge into eternal death. The whole world may obey a man, and ‘uttermost Thule may be at his feet’;b but he is poverty-stricken unless he possesses Him in whom all things are possessed. Though he feasts off silver and drinks from crystal, he is hungry and ‘with dry mouth digests his hunger’c unless he drinks deep from Him from whom all things are filled full. He may be clothed in purple and sleep on feathers, but he has no peace unless he lies back on Him who alone is the peace through whichd all things find peace. 1, 6. Vau. From the daughter of Sion all her beauty is departed; her princes are become like rams that Cf. Matt. 24, 43-44; Luke 12, 39-40. Vergil, Georg. 1, 30 c  Petronius 82, 5. d  Or, perhaps better, emend to quem: ‘(Him) through whom’. a 

b 

72

14.

1.

I, 5 (13.) – I, 6 (2.)

2.

find no pastures, and they are gone away without strength before the face of the pursuer. Vau, which means ‘and’, is to be joined with the preceding letter,a to give ‘this is the law, and’. This law will live for ever, sanctioned by the justice of God: those who break it are punished for not being afraid to offend God. And whereas in the preceding verseb the prophet complained of the superiority of the foe and the leading away of the children, now he intensifies the complaint by speaking of the confusion of the common people and the taking captive of the princes. You may understand ‘daughter of Sion’ to mean the weakness of the tender sex or of the ignorant mob: either is acceptable. Women, who exaggerate their natural voluptuousness even avowedly and on purpose, had stripped themselves of all their beauty: they preferred devoting themselves to public mourning rather than to private ornamention. All the beauty of the people too had departed: the wall had been levelled, the temple overthrown, the princes led away, though they should have been there to give them beauty in prosperity and protection in adversity. Her princes are become like rams that find no pastures. Rams that find no pastures die as hunger eats away their innards. Thus those who should have led the flock to rich food give rise to mass death, the contagion passing imperceptibly from one to affect all. Similarly the princes of the Israelites were the first to flee; they abandoned the citizens whom it was their job to look after, and gave them up to be torn to pieces by their enemies. For, as the fourth book of Kingsc and Jeremiah himselfd tell us, when the Babylonian army had broken down the wall and entered the city at midnight, the leaders escaped in the blind confusion. King Zedekiah himself had made good his escape, thanks to the dark William ignores this letter in forming the second connection. Paschasius makes more sense (see on I, 8, 1). b  comma, meaning the whole of verse 5. The word is used in the same sense at I, 8, 4; I, 9, 1; II, 18, 1. For William’s use of the terms uersus and uersiculus see I, 2, 1 n.; for capitulum see on III, 52-54, 7. c  Cf. 4 Kgs. 25, 1-12. d  Cf. Jer. 39, 1-10; 52, 4-16. a 

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night, but when the enemy went after him he was betrayed by daylight and captured, giving his hands over to shackles and his eyes to blindness. Of the rest the luckier were killed by the sword and found burial with the ashes of their country; the more to be pitied were taken off to Babylon and marked the good fortune of the slaughtered by their constant longing for them. The former, taking the short cut of a kindly death, escaped the disgrace of slavery, the latter were saved to be made sport of. Allegorically, ‘the daughter of Sion’ represents the weaker members of the church, who, content with straightforwardly doing what charity demands, are not able, and do not seek, to go deeply into any branch of knowledge. Of them is said in the Songs of Songs: King Solomon hath made him a litter of the wood of Libanus: the pillars thereof he made of silver, the seat of gold, the going up of purple: the midst he covered with charity for the daughters of Jerusalem (S. of S. 3, 9-10). To put this concisely, Christ the king who brings peace, who by sacrificing His own life put an end to the enmity between God and man, set up a church filled with the splendours of the scriptures. It was made of the wood of Libanus, that is, souls that have been washed by baptism and will live for ever. For Libanus means ‘whitening’; it has wood that knows not decay, and scorns to rot. The silver columns of the church were the apostles, shining in their lives and loud in their preaching. Hence: The words of the Lord are pure words: silver tried by the fire (Ps. 11, 7); and Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth (Ps. 18, 5). The stepsa of the church were the martyrs, who strewed the way with the purple of their blood, and bore away heaven by the violence of their indomitable hearts.b The seatc represented the holy teachers, who lay back amid the peace of the church and wafted through the whole world the golden breath of their wisdom: The treasure to be desired resteth in the mouth of the wise (Prov. 21, 20 + 14, 33). But the midst of the church, that is, the simple precepts, Christ covered with charity, that is, He made them smooth, so that those ‘The going up’ of the quotation. Cf. Matt. 11, 12. c  reclinatorium, ‘the back of the couch’. a 

b 

74

3.

4.

I, 6 (2.-7.)

5.

6.

7.

who are not up to the duties of high persons may at least embrace the love of God and their neighbour, and so that those who cannot edify others by their sermonsa may adorn themselves with their orderly behaviour. But from this daughter of Sion all the beauty departs when the weaker members of the church, found worthless in time of persecution, desert their faith and go over to the enemy; or when during peacetime they are to outward view b doubtful in the faith, and deceive others into seeing them as neither dull of mind nor base in works. But the guilt of the lower orders is excused by the idleness of the higher. A subject readily leaves the path of justice when his superior does not merely fail to restrain him by discipline, but gives him many examples to lead him into evil. It is hard for anyone to adjust his appearance in front of a mirrorc if he has one that is dull and dim. Hence what comes next: Her princes are become like rams that find no pastures, and they are gone away without strength before the face of the pursuer. This may be because in the persecutions some who seemed to be the princes of the church, disregarding and despising the pastures of the church as being unfruitful and arid, betrayed their faith and went away into exile, wherever the onrush of faithlessness took them. Or you may prefer to understand it of the modern rulers of the church. I should contend for this view the more assuredly because it is more familiar to human eyes. For in a period of deep peace they do not find pastures the food from which would hearten the citizens of the Lord to seek the verdant joys of everlasting life. Gripped by passion for money and dice (not to speak of less public practices) rather than letters, they have nothing at hand to say; or else, despite by no means negligible knowledge and careful and meticulous training, they are devoid of eloquence. But as for those with both excellent understanding and elegant powers of expression, they undermine their own preaching by the folly of their lives. So those who should have been the rams Or just ‘words’. For the ambiguity see IV, 1, 3 n. This implied addition seems the only way of making some sense of this phrase. c  Cf. GR 157, 2 ‘speculo uultum comere’, ‘make up her face in the mirror’. a 

b 

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of the Lord’s sheepfolds have become dumb dogs not able to bark.a It is not enough for them to do no good: they have to do harm as well. What the prophet said of the Jews, Who is blind, but the servant of the Lord? (Isa. 42, 19), may be said of these people too. Who but they brood over their riches? Who but they bring disorder to churches?—such is their propensity to harass their subjects by their actions and oppress them by their words, bringing false charges, bearing away goods, contributing misery. Off with them then, ‘without strength’ for good, to where hope of profit and avarice hurry them, in hot pursuit: one day they will receive their due punishment. Meanwhile, let them pursue their violent course in all their mad rage, treasuring up to themselves wrath in the day of wrath.b We should not be disconcerted if, misusing long life and God’s patience, they bring death on many whose substance they consume. For, although this puts the afflicted to a stern test, it adds to the severity of the condemnation that awaits the afflicters. Those who heap sin on sin avenge the afflicted in their own persons. In the moral sense, the daughter of heavenly Sion is the soul, for the moment, at least, while she remembers her divine inspiration and does not behave so as to stray from her noble origin. But if she does choose to go into exile and banishes herself from her own heritage, all her beauty departs from her. The soul has two beauties, right belief and good works. They are related to each other: they are glad to meet each other and to run into each other’s arms. But if a Gentile is chaste or abstemious, he is wasting his effort, because, while depriving himself of the pleasures of this world, he cannot, because of his unbelief, aspire to the delights of eternity. As for a Christian, if he is unchaste or the slave of his belly, he carries around in a living corpse an empty shadow of faith, as the apostle James testifies: Faith without works is dead (Jas. 2, 26). What then if he is both deficient in faith and does evil deeds? Such a one, ugly with every deformity, by his ugliness saddens heaven, befouls the earth, pollutes all the elements. a  b 

Cf. Isa. 56, 10. Cf. Rom. 2, 5.

76

8.

I, 6 (7.-11.)

9.

10.

11.

What follows, Her princes are become like rams that find no pastures: and they are gone away without strength before the face of the pursuer, puts the preceding sentence more strongly. The ruling element in the body is the heart, the ruling element in the heart is the soul. If in a man these two wanton in opposition to God, they go to rack and ruin like brute beasts devoid of reason. A man like this is a worthless chattel: he goes wherever he is led by Lady Unreason, the step-mother of all good. He rages (as Job puts it) with neck stretched out and a mass of fat,a feeding on the winds, that is, on vanities. On the other hand, the psalmist says: The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing. In a place of pasture, there He hath set me (Ps. 22, 1-2). The pasture of a blessed soul is Holy Scripture. When the soul is refreshed by its unspeakable < … > and its agreeable sweetness, she can lay aside the aged relics of the former man and dart forth into the youth of good works, saying with the same psalmist: Bless the Lord, O my soul: who satisfieth thy desire with good things: thy youth shall be renewed like the eagle’s (Ps. 102, 1 and 5). This is the soul that the Lord rules, this the soul that will want nothing, for nothing that is necessary is wanting to her for whom God is all in all.b But the evil soul, her rival, which abandons Him of whom is said The Lord strong and mighty (Ps. 23, 8), and who, being the stronger, takes away the armour of the strong and distributes his spoilsc—this soul, I say, deprived of God, goes ahead while the Devil pursues, just as before she did not blush to follow him. For as in the psalm it is said of God His mercy shall prevent me (Ps. 58, 11) and His mercy will follow me (Ps. 22, 6), so it may be said of the Devil that he goes ahead while he is luring a soul into sin, but pursues while he is driving her on to punishment. He is cunning in the former position, cruel in the latter; but in both he must be guarded against. Yet, good God, who will be able to escape his toils? We run into them just when we are most sure we have escaped them, fall into them just when we least fear them. No one, good Lord, no Cf. Job 15, 26-7; Isa. 3, 16. Cf. 1 Cor. 15, 28. c  Cf. Luke 11, 21-22. a 

b 

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one at all, kind Doctor, will leap over the Devil’s nets unless your power works with him. For you, and you only, is it easy to save the redeemed whom you redeemed when they were lost. 1, 7. Zain. And Jerusalem hath remembered the days of her affliction and prevarication of all her desirable things, when her people fell in the enemy’s hand, and there was no helper; the enemies have seen her, and have mocked at her sabbaths. Zain means ‘this’. But to complete the sense, one has to add the following letter,a which means ‘life’, giving ‘this life’, that is, the beginning of salvation and forgiveness, so that one in tribulation may remember the Jerusalem on high from which he fell, and know that he suffers what he suffers because of his sins. To turn to the historical sense: the precept In the day of good things be not unmindful of evils: and in the day of evils be not unmindful of good things (Ecclus. 11, 27) is well-known, and salutary to human life. If we obeyed this in a holy manner, prosperity would not make us high and mighty, nor would adversity lower us into despair. For in prosperous times fear would convict our minds of arrogance, while in bad times hope would alleviate our sadness. But, in fact, such is the plight of human nature, so useful a precept finds few followers. For in good times swelling pride is scarcely checked except by some heavy stroke of fortune, and grief is eased not by reason but by time. But what the prophet says in our passage corresponds to common experience. The shadow of past happiness hovers before the mind of one suffering evil, and the dream of joy over and gone makes present sadness sharper. The survivors from the fall of Jerusalem, the prophet says, remembered the days of their affliction and the prevarication, that is the loss, of all their desirable things. For their calamitous new affliction continued to call forth tears, the more so because there was no place for help—everything was against them, and remedies proved counter-productive; and equally because the good things they had lost had been theirs from the days of old: the results of the labour of their ancestors had become as it were an inescapable part of a 

heth: see I, 8, 1.

78

1.

2.

3.

I, 6 (11.) – I, 7 (5.)

4.

5.

them. It seems, indeed it is wretched, when you have contributed little or nothing to the public weal by your own efforts, to lose what the distinction of your predecessors acquired. Sons deserve ill of their fathers when by their obstinacy they tear up what they established, or lose it by their sloth, or consume it by their greed. And that their pain should be perfect and complete, to the scorn of men was joined insult to heaven, for the Jewish religion was made a reproach by the enemy. The enemies have seen her, and have mocked at her sabbaths. The ultimate blow for the wretched is to be thought to have deserved what they suffer. The neighbouring nations shouted for joy: evil was deservedly befalling those who were shrouded in a baseless superstition known to no other peoples, and who wasted a seventh of their lives in slothful ease. Look, they said, how pointless the observances of the Jews, how fruitless the sabbath break! Surely so great a city would never have fallen so pitiably if there were any power in heaven that had taken pleasure in the regular keeping of the sabbath. In the allegorical sense, the people of the church fall into the enemy’s hands, in such a way that there is no helper to be seen. In past time, only a part : many gave in, overcome by savage persecutors: some in word only, some from the heart. When they lapsed, their mother lamented them with heartfelt groans; when they returned, she greeted them with open arms. But nowadays the people falls into the enemy’s hands in droves: the whole world is going downhill into evil, and almost no one brings help. The man who by God’s grace guards and fortifies the unconquered strength of his mind, stands firm, while the man who slips on vices and confounds the stumbling footsteps of his mind in a veil of sin, falls. But a just man falls seven times and rises againa because he is ashamed to have done things of which he repents, and by which he saddens nature. But the unjust man plunges deeper in, and thrashes around in the mire, as the prophet asserts, not as a prayer but as a prophecy: He that is filthy, let him be filthy still (Rev. 22, 11). And in fact if a man at times walks una 

Cf. Prov. 24, 16.

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steadily along the path of good, he does not entirely stray from nature’s way: he did wrong by chance, not on purpose. But to nourish evil obstinately, to set your face and have an impenitent heart—that is madness. So let the just man rise again quickly, for fear he may be gripped by bad habit and choose to go on lying where he fell against his will. Sin is like rust: it is quick to stick to you, and difficult to get off. ‘To leave off philosophy is to give it up,’ says Seneca.a If you leave off what is good, it is all too easy for you to give it up. As for the unjust man, he should blush to be the lackey of worthless spirits after having been adopted by God as His son. If he can, let him shake off slavery to bothb with a single effort; if he cannot, let him make a gradual escape. No one reaches the top suddenly: you have to go by stages to reach a high place. Let us, I tell you, feel with her the pain of the mother who bore us in Christ, us of whom she is in painful labour again until Christ is formed in us.c Let us not take the side of her enemies or burst into bud as vipers; otherwise, while she is preparing to bring us forth into the light, we may eat away her vitals and become matricides. The enemies of the church are demons, heretics, bad catholics. They operate with the goad of temptation, with arguments and with bad examples respectively. Wherefore in the Song of Songs she complains most bitterly to her faithful people concerning bad catholics in particular: Do not consider me that I am brown, because the sun hath altered my colour (S. of S. 1, 5). Although there are those who take it another way according to the context of the quotation, it can be understood as follows: Do not consider me, O my faithful ones, as if I had the beauty I once had, because I am made brown by the dark stain of sins, and the sun (that is, the great heat of persecution) has altered my colour. For by the sun is understood sometimes Christ, as in The sun of justice doth not shine upon us (Wisd. 5, 6), sometimes persecution, as in The sun rose with a burning heat, and parched the grass (Jas. 1, 11), that is, Seneca, Epist. 72, 3 (playing on intermittere/omittere). Apparently sin and demons. But amborum may be corrupt. c  Cf. Gal. 4, 19. a 

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6.

7.

I, 7 (5.-10.)

8.

9.

10.

persecution grew hot, and the greenness of faith faded from those who had appeared to be ripening in the meadow of the church to give hope of good. Now the church herself makes clear who the persecutors were, when she says: The sons of my mother have fought against me (S. of S. 1, 5), that is, those whom I had borne in the faith have preferred to follow the faithlessness of my mother, that is, the synagogue, and in their obstinacy do not cease to attack me. So it is understandable that when enemies see her they ‘mock at her sabbaths’. When a Jew sees a Christian committing adultery and breaking oaths, it is no wonder if he mocks at his solemn rites: he sets his mouth against heaven,a and cries out blasphemies at Christ. We therefore are subject to stoning by the abuse with which the blessed apostle branded the Jews themselves when he said: The name of God through you is blasphemed among the Gentiles (Rom. 2, 24). If a Christian sins, Christianity is derided. If a monk strays from the Rule, monasticism is abused. You are unreasonable to act like this, children of men. No one unless he has lost his reason through mental illness will condemn gold or silver, even though it is because of them that men rush to arms and hasten to take up the sword. Judge aright, then. Let not the law be condemned, but the transgressor of the law. Let not the precept be judged, but the breaker of the precept. Still, it is reckless to pass sentence on the secrets of others, for the Lord says: Judge not, that you may not be judged (Matt. 7, 1). A man is exceeding his powers if he takes it upon himself to play the part of God—or rather makes greater claims for himself than does God; for the Lord also says: The Father doth not judge any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son (John 5, 22). Further, these verses refer to morality. Sometimes (we may say) a soul that is accustomed to good slips back into worse ways thanks to her own fragility and out of a kind of boredom with virtue. It is then that her people, that is her thoughts, are scattered in droves at the whim of the enemy; then that perish the desirable virtues, that God had of old decreed for the soul, and that she hera 

Cf. Ps. 72, 9.

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self had been glad and grateful to possess. It is then, too, that there is no help, because even God’s pity is far away: the soul prevents it approaching by her own wickedness, having closed off His most merciful ears with the bars of her vices. In such people human aid is robbed of effect, even if affection does not fail. If (it is written) one man shall sin against another, he may be reconciled to him; but if against God, who shall pray for him? (1 Kgs. 2, 25). How few men are anxious to cure their own sins, or those of others!—so true is it that we all turn aside in other directions. But suppose that at most, and even though things go well, there is someone who does concern himself with his own sins: no one is so at leisure amid his own affairs as to have time for those of others. Thus when the soul sees herself devoid of help, her hopes shipwrecked, she remembers with a groan the good things she once had, and shudders the more at the ills that afflict her. Longing for the past and disgusted with the present, she strives after glory, anxious to take first prize for virtue. So sometimes, her pleasures already satiated in this flood of effort, she rests from the crimes that swept her on in her drunkenness, and celebrates the sabbath of which the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah: If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy own will in my holy day, and call the sabbath delightful, and the holy of the Lord glorious, and glorify him, while thou dost not thy own ways, and thy own will is not found, to speak a word, then shalt thou be delighted in the Lord (Isa. 58, 13-14). This is the sabbath, this the holiday from crime that the enemy demons see and mock, for at once they attack the soul with many contrivances, and cast her down into the labour of her crimes. She gives her consent, and becomes entangled in the yoke of trouble. For what gives more trouble than injustice, which tires out both souls and bodies? From delightful rest, then, she deviates into sins, which she practises with trouble and of which she repents with pain. There are visible enemies, too, envious men, tormented by the prosperity of others, and troubled when others change their ways. When someone is inured to crime, but at times as it were gapes in the direction of the good, they attend him with spiteful looks,

82

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harass him with jeers, tear him to shreds with malicious words. They spend all day and all night in gossip about such people; nothing is more pleasant for mankind than to talk about the business of others—and concern themselves in it too. They have no compunction, therefore, in mocking the sabbath of a soul that flits about unable to settle in one state or the other; they are quite sure that before long she will relapse into her old habits. When this happens, there is no end or limit to their taunts. Such men envy those who act well, laugh at sinners, harass the unfortunate by bringing up their past lives against them. The worst thing indeed that the wretched have to endure is to be lowered in the opinion of the crowd and be thought to have deserved their sufferings. 1, 8. Heth. Jerusalem hath sinned the sin, therefore is she become unstable; all that honoured her have despised her, because they have seen her shame; but she sighed and turned backward. Heth, as I said earlier,a means ‘life’. Here we have the second ‘connection’ of four letters,b with the meaning: ‘That is this life.’ It may be understood from this that what God, for all His rigour, has in store for a sinner is life, unless he refuses it, and perpetual salvation, unless he murmurs against it. There is a popular proverb: ‘He who kicks against the goad pricks himself twice.’c Wretched indeed is he who is punished both here for his offence and in another place for his obstinacy; wretched is he who does not take a whipping from his father in the spirit a good son should. By repeating rootsd in ‘hath sinned the sin’ makes quite clear the faithlessness of a nation that sinned. This is the sin of which the Lord speaks to the apostles: If I had not come, and spoken to them (doubtless the Jews), they would not have sin (John 15, 22). It was not that the apostles were altogether without sin. Even sucklingse and the new-born are not clean of sin, as scripI, 7, 1. Cf. I, 4, 1 on the first ‘connection’. For ista and haec see above, I, 5, 1 n. The ‘connection’ should properly be ‘ista et haec uita’ (so Paschasius 2, 54). c  Cf. Acts 26, 14. d  Cf. III, 19-21, 5 e  lacteolus is found in this sense also at II, 835. a 

b 

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ture witnesses: There is no man who sinneth not, not even an infant of one day, if his life is upon earth (3 Kgs. 8, 46 + Job 14, 4-5). What is more, the propheta says he was snared in sin before he was born into the world: Behold I was conceived in iniquities; and in sins did my mother conceive me (Ps. 50, 7). So the sin spoken of thereb is the one of which it is true that if it remains, all others remain; but when it is purged, the rest can be purged. Do you want to know what it is called? Lack of belief in God. With this the Israelites defiled themselves right from the start, when by making a molten calf in the desert they shamefully offered up the first-fruits of unbelief;c and no less the people of Jerusalem, when in the valley of the sons of Hinnom they made their own sons pass through fire in honour of the Baalim:d barbarous murderers they were, surpassing the savagery of brute beasts. For wild animals love their offspring, and do not hesitate to risk death for their sake. But these people could scarcely refrain from eating the corpses of their children, with whose blood they made sacrifice. It is well known how often kings of Israel and Judah are branded with the damning formula: Such and such departed not from the ways of Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin (4 Kgs. 10, 29). Therefore it was this sin in particular that made Jerusalem unstable. She accordingly taught everyone by her fall how God is to be worshipped, if not out of love for grace, at least for fear of hell. It is He, when on occasion He is in a friendly mood, who provides even the fleeting good things of this world; it is He who takes them away when He is angry. He uses good things on earth as a bait, so that we feel more confident in our quest for the good things that last for ever; He uses bad things on earth as a threat, so that we make more haste to avoid the bad things to come. But what follows now is quite clear, even without explanation. Taking the role of Jerusalem, tells of a vice afflicting mankind from of old, one that has been banal in every age. For as Fortune changes her face to suit every occasion, so friends too David, here as elsewhere, is regarded as a prophet. That is, in John 15, 22. c  Cf. Exod. 32, 1-6. d  Cf. Jer. 32, 35; 4 Kgs. 21, 6. a 

b 

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are quick to put on a new complexion. Those who used to walk at one’s side most attentively, who were inspired by the empty hope of gain, who by their lunatic flattery made a fool into a madman; those who used to welcome all one’s words with open arms (as people say) and lauded them to heaven, to the skies: all these now swima in the other direction. That is a man to be pitied indeed, who is afflicted both by his enemies’ wrong-headedness and his friends’ betrayal. For disgrace brought upon him by his enemies makes him an object of scorn to his intimates, so that even those who have no occasion to withdraw their allegiance look around for one. Then the wretch, despairing of the hope he had entertained of pleasure from the help of friends, can bring against these ingrates only his groans, only by groans can he avenge his grief. Hence the prophet, who in the preceding verses had accused open enemies of barbarity, in this section condemns false friends for disloyalty. A grave outrage in the eyes of God, a great crime in the eyes of men, to break asunder the law of nature, to fail to acknowledge close ties, so that it looks as if what you loved was not the man but his property, not friendship but fortune! Allegorically the truth of these verses can be reflected on in connection with the church, in part and as a whole. For the churchmen who, as the blessed John said, went out from us but are not of us,b sin the sin when they stray from the virtue of faith. Relying on superiority of intellect and a gift for ready loquacity, they form their own private groups. They use plausible arguments to befog the uneducated, so as to plunge them into death together with themselves. Wherefore they become unstable, because they first desert the catholic faith and then waver in their own tenets. One can see this in the case of Arius, who at first had no time for a Son who was like the Father, declaring that He was entirely unlike Him in nature, power and duration. Then, warned by being exiled, he watered down his view, stating that the Son could be said to be ‘like’, but only by bestowal of grace, not in His proper a 

This seems to be the image. Cf. (to some extent) Juvenal 4, 89 (see GP II,

b 

Cf. 1 John 2, 19.

63).

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nature. The Eunomians, therefore, who had earlier appeared to be adherents of his, condemned him for levity and incorrect opinions; they said that the Son could definitely not be put on a level with the Father, creature with Creator. He was also condemned by the Macedonians, who said that the Son was like the Father in all respects, but that the Holy Spirit was quite different from both. So, as Rufinus says,a that beast, which in the person of Arius had first raised its head as though from the underworld, suddenly appeared in threefold shape. As a result, some, not yet re-born but already candidates for the faith, who were proceeding to enrol as Christians, were set back in their tracks by such disputes. Reasonings so divergent made them worry that they might fall into error where they thought to find faith. So they came to despise the church, though they had honoured her before; they concluded that something so diverse could not possibly be true. Moreover the emperors, themselves Christians of course, but supporters of heretics, treated the catholics roughly. The worst of them, Valens, went so far as to withdraw monks from the service of God and sign them on as soldiers. And he would have gone further down this mad path had he not been brought back to his senses by a philosopher who was then very famous. This man, Themistius, wrote a book arguing that there was nothing new or contrary to reason if there was some variety of reasoning among Christians, seeing that among philosophers there were 300 or more different sects. ‘One cannot arrive,’ the saying goes,b ‘at so great a secret along a single route.’ There are many by-ways, many crossroads, but one head of all. The beginning of everything is the search for truth, and the end of everything attainment of the good. And it may be God’s pleasure that a search along many routes should end in its discovery on one particular path. Within the church people argued on these lines; but (as I said)c many outside her withdrew their affection. Every kind of disaster befell the church, as some tore her apart Cf. Rufinus, Hist. 10, 26. Symmachus, Rel. 3, 10, doubtless known to William via Ambrose, Epist. 73, 8, from which inquit is carried over. c  I, 8, 7. a 

b 

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I, 8 (6.-11.)

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10.

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with internal conflict, others vilified her with malicious tongues. Thus her more perfect membersa gave themselves over to groans: the hopes they had entertained of converting the Gentiles had suffered a setback. The soul too, formed as she was to contemplate lasting peace, sinned the sin when she drank down the venom of persuasion by vipers, and no less when she made herself subordinate to idols, deserting the Creator who from the essence of the things that exist is understood to exist, and from their wonderful orderliness is understood to be wise, and from their movement is understood to live. Therefore she became unstable when she was engulfed in the whirlpools of vice and whirled away by the opinions of the philosophers. Hence what the apostle says: The invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable. Because that, though they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks. For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections (Rom. 1, 20-21, 26). Apostle and prophet, then, agree that because of the crime of transgression, the sinner falls into instability and shameful affection. Also, the soul sins the sin every day when she denies by her words and blasphemes by her actions the God whom she confesses. The believer seems close to the false, the faithless to the true, except that one who transgresses against what he believes is condemned by his own conscience more than one who does not keep to what he does not believe. Accordingly, the soul is ‘become unstable’ because she holds to neither course: if she acts well, she grows disgusted; if she acts badly, she feels penitent. What stability, I ask you, is there in a soul which often, and indeed virtually always, is so deluded that she thinks the harmful healthy, and vice versa? Not without reason, then, all that honoured her have despised her, because they have seen her shame. When Christianity was a new and tender shoot, demons yielded ground to almost every Christian, and took to flight from a body into which they had surreptitiously slipped their way. By this swift departure they honoured the Christian soul, which they now dea 

Lit. ‘her more perfect bowels’: a strange phrase.

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spise because they see her shame. For how rarely nowadays do we find a Christian deterred by the punishment his conscience inflicts, so that he ventures to give orders to demons! If only each of us would and could by the grace of God expel them from his heart, let alone drive them out of the innermost recesses of others! But, still worse, we help them by making inside ourselves a snug place for them to hide; the result is that they not merely fail to consider flight, but with our consent promise themselves a lasting home. Hence what follows: But she sighed and turned backward. The soul is said to sigh either because she does things that need to be sighed for, and is said to do what demonstrably she ought not to do, or because no one with any sense or reason is so obstinate that he does not sometimes sigh for his sins. And turned backward: Of this turning the Lord says: No man putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God (Luke 9, 62). On the other hand, the apostle says: Forgetting the things that are behind, I stretch forth myself to those that are before, to the prize of the supernal vocation (Phil. 3, 13-14). Happy the man who suffers from this kind of memory loss,a so that his mind grows dull towards the temporal! Happy the man the eyes of whose mind are not dazzled when he gazes keenly at the heavenly! What heavenly things are like is suggested by the Bride in the Song of Songs, when she says: ‘Behold, I sleep, and my heart watcheth’ (S. of S. 5, 2), as if to say: While I sleep outwardly, resting from the tumults of the world, in my inner thoughts I am awake, concentrating on heavenly things. For holy men, while despising all earthly things, while altogether shunning disturbances, by no means renounce the world in order to indulge in torpor; on the contrary, they are hard at work within, striving to see what those things are for which they were made. They do not sleep to be slothful; they are taking a rest from the transitory in order to contemplate the eternal more freely.

‘Lethargy, illness involving loss of memory or drowsiness’ (ODML s.v. lethargus). a 

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I, 8 (11.) – I, 9 (1.)

13.

1.

But as for us, if we chance to be enveloped in transitory things, we sink of our own volition:a dull and feeble in regard to the eternal, sharp-sighted and energetic when it comes to the fleeting. If we happen on occasion to rouse ourselves to do good, we immediately return in our heart to Egypt (that is, we are hampered by the darkness of our sins: ‘Egypt’ means ‘darkness’), to sit over the flesh pots,b that is, to lie back gladly, in a hot bath of pleasure that prevents us slimming down the fat of our hearts so that we can serve God freely. This is why the shadows of our sins disquiet us, and assail us as we pray, when we should least wish them to. What we did voluntarily, we pay for against our will. Even in this world our very pleasures are a torment to us. It is a fair exchange, a just recompense, that our sins should be a barrier to prevent our prayers reaching God, seeing that we have made of those sins a barrier for our hearts, to enable us to flout God’s commandments. 1, 9. Teth. Her filthiness is on her feet, and she hath not remembered her end; she is wonderfully cast down, not having comfort. Behold, O Lord, my affliction, because the enemy is lifted up. Teth, ‘good’, distinguishes the third ‘connection’ of letters, to convey the point that all the good of both livesc is begun and completed through belief in the Holy Trinity, just as conversely it is weakened and destroyed by disbelief. Or at least, if the meaning of the next letter jod (‘beginning’) is added, we get ‘good beginning’, displayed when city or church or soul, finding no comfort from men, complains to God of her miseries and bewails her troubles to

a  The same contrast of chance and intention is expressed at I, 11, 7 ‘so many are the enveloping vices of the world into which we are plunged by chance or choice’. For affectus thus see TLL s.v. 1192, 9-31 (consilium). b  Cf. Exod. 16, 3. c  i.e. in this world and the next (cf. I, 10, 6). The phrasing is odd, for a ‘connection’ can hardly consist of a single letter. ‘Distinguishes’ (insignit) seems to mean ‘brings distinction to’ (i.e. ‘is the crucial point in’?). One might expect a word meaning ‘begins’. William proceeds to form a proper ‘connection’ by adding the next letter (so Jerome and Paschasius).

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Him. For this is what the prophet sets out to do at the end of this verse,a taking the role of the city. The filthiness, he says, which she had contracted from the start of her unbelief,b she protracted to the very end: for, when she had been placed on a lofty peak of prosperity, she neglected to take notice of what end would follow such proud display. For by filthiness of the feet, which are at the end of the body, is signified malice continued to the end of time. Similar is the passage I mentioned earlier,c the Lord’s words to Jerusalem before her second destruction: in this day, the things that are to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes (Luke 19, 42). So the Lord and the prophet are in accord, and what the one said took place at the first overthrow of the city, the other with divine insight predicted would take place at the second. For great felicity dims the eyes of mortal men and prevents them looking forward to the future, though it is better to display moderation in enjoying good things. If a man enjoys such things inordinately, then when evils happen to rush upon him, they press down on him with their whole bulk, leave him winded by their whole weight. But if the order of words is switched round, to give: ‘because she hath not remembered her end, her filthiness is on her feet’, the sense is wonderfully harmonious. For since in good times had behaved arrogantly, and, not considering her end, had misused the gift of God, the filthiness of sin, long built up, took her over at the last. Wherefore it was plain to see that she had not served God in sincerity of heart, for He gave her no help to prop her up. Hence also Isaiah: Because the daughters of Sion are haughty, and have walked with stretched out necks, and went with wanton glances of their eyes, and made a noise, walked, and with their feet moved in a set pace: the Lord will make bald the crown of the head of the daughters of Sion, and the Lord will discover their

a  William refers to the words of the city, beginning at ‘Behold’ (cf. I, 9, 5 ‘the citizens of Jerusalem, bereft of comfort from men, lay their complaint before God’). For comma, see I, 6, 1 n. b  Cf. I, 8, 3 ‘right from the start’ (the molten calf). c  Cf. I, 3, 8.

90

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3.

I, 9 (1.-6.)

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5.

6.

hair (Isa. 3, 16-17), and the rest, in which, with considerable circumlocution of threats, he warns the faithless of what is to come. This meaning is backed up by the next words, is wonderfully cast down, not having a comforter. The wretched feel not a little relief if they have a comforter to hand. There are of course some who arm themselves against fortune with arguments and with the books they read, and as it were fortify their innards against harmful juices by taking antidotes. But no one encompassed by ills fails to shudder, fails to be bewildered, as if thunderstruck. Then the force of his grief sucks out and drains whatever stock of petty reasonings and writings he had put together during a long period of study. He cannot control himself and stop grieving, even though he knows grief is not appropriate. then, if a friend appears on the scene, especially one of wide experience or a master of words, the sufferer finds that much of his sorrow departs. In this way reason, though present in the mind by nature, becomes more attractive if another person prompts it. So many people there are who know how to take thought for others rather than themselves, to look to another’s sadness rather than their own!a But the citizens of Jerusalem, bereft of comfort from men, lay their complaint before God, saying in the person of the city: Behold, O Lord, my affliction, because the enemy is lifted up. Imagine the wretchedness of men tortured both by their own calamity and by the success of their enemies! The man who watches or expects the punishment of his rivals can bear his own trouble more patiently; to be the laughing stock of those who hate you is what brings real pain. It is this affliction that the people of Jerusalem ask God to behold, that is, to lighten. For God’s ‘seeing’ is understood in the scriptures in two senses, and perhaps more. Of the severity of justice. This is the sense intended by Zechariah: when oppressed by a stony cloud for the sake of justice, he said: ‘The Lord see and judge.’ b Of the serenity of grace, as in For the Lord is high, and looketh on the low (Ps. 137, 6), and The eyes of the Lord are upon the just (Ps. 33, 16 = 1 Pet. 3, 12). These are the eyes a  b 

Contrast I, 7, 10 (I, 1106-1108). See 2 Chr. 24, 20-22: Zechariah was stoned.

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with which the Lord looked at Peter, so that a fount of bitter tears washed away the filth of his triple denial.a Hence the blessed Ambrose begs, with his usual grace of language: ‘Jesus, look on those who lapse, and correct us by seeing us; if you look, lapses fall away, and guilt is dissolved in weeping.’ b If the splendour of Godhead lights up my darkness with these eyes, the clouds of misery, made thick by my crimes, will be scattered forthwith. And to be sure, if it so pleased His majesty, we have already paid sufficient penalty, if we, who have sinned more than enough, can ever be punished as we deserve. Allegorically ‘feet’ are holy preachers, who carry the church through the world and exult. Of them is said: How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that preacheth good, that bringeth tidings of salvation! (Isa. 52, 7). Also Ezekiel: Their feet (doubtless those of the living creatures in heaven) were straight feet (Ezek. 1, 7). The feet of holy preachers are said to be straight because their steps are not twisted round to follow iniquity. Hence the Bridegroom says to the church in the Song of Songs: How beautiful are thy steps in shoes, O prince’s daughter! (S. of S. 7, 1). The ‘prince’s daughter’ is the church of Christ, which by the power of His divinity exercises princely rule over every creature. Her ‘shoes’ are the examples given by deceased fathers, by which she is fortified on her journey through this world. Beautiful are the steps of the church, which is the prince’s daughter, because God is pleased by the service done by a preacher who preaches according to the example of the fathers. But in modern times the filthiness of the church is on her feet because all the dross of vice, all the scum of filthiness, has drained into those who should have wiped them off others: and this precisely because they do not remember their end. For while their subjects tremble as they give some order by virtue of their high authority or vast wealth, they do not take their own measure, but consider themselves beyond the bounds of mortality; they are so used to being flattered that they convince themselves of the truth a  b 

Cf. Matt. 26, 75; Luke 22, 62. Hymn. 2, 25-28 (pp. 33-34).

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I, 9 (6.-10.)

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of what they are told. Most reckless of men are those who trust the judgement of others about them rather than their own. They forget the sayings The glory of man is a worm (Job 25, 6) and Why is earth and ashes proud? (Ecclus. 10, 9), and The mighty shall be mightily tormented (Wisd. 6, 7), and ‘To whom more is committed, of him more is demanded’,a and, on the brevity of human life (Ps. 89, 6), In the morning let him pass by like grass (in childhood); in the morning flourish and pass by (in youth): in the evening (in old age) fall (in death), grow hard (as a corpse), and grow dry (as dust). So to them happens what is written: They have set their mouth against heaven: and their tongue has passed through the earth (Ps. 72, 9). And again: When they were lifted up thou hast cast them down (Ps. 72, 18). For while to the outside observer they look remarkably swollen, inside they are growing wretchedly more empty. Next: She is wonderfully cast down, not having a comforter. They will be cast down wonderfully when their corpses recognise their own condition, when their souls spend a hateful eternity undergoing punishment. They will not have a comforter, because demons will jeer at them in their forlorn state, and men will feel free to abuse them, as they so often do the dead. Or, if this verse is applied to the church as a whole, she is cast down wonderfully when the men who seemed to be columns supporting the church themselves slide into crime, casting down others in their own mighty fall. And they do not have a comforter because their shepherds are hirelings, and see the wolf, and fly, and the wolf catcheth, and scattereth the sheep (John 10, 12); they are dumb dogs not able to bark.b If only they just kept quiet out of timidity, rather than greedily and wantonly attacking others! Their subjects would have some remedy for their distress, if they did not find themselves destroyed by those they had hoped would protect them. Hence the church, addressing God directly, says: Behold, O Lord, my affliction, because the enemy is lifted up. For when those who should have raised others hurl themselves into evil, they thrust down their subjects A proverbial saying based on Luke 12, 48; it is used in the Regula Benedicti (2, 30: p. 24) to remind abbots of their responsibilities. b  Cf. Isa. 56, 10. a 

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in their own fall, and raise enemy demons to gladness: who, when the leadership lies prostrate, swoop in to claim an easy prey where no one is available to defend and encourage. In this manner, to use the visible to explain a mystery, the foreigners assailed the mighty Samson, first with a show of strength, then, when that did not succeed, with a harlot’s tricks,a planning that once he was removed from the scene the Israelites would fall under their sway without anyone to hinder them. In this manner too they put Hophni and Phinehas, priests of the Lord, to the sword in order to win control of the ark, which had known the sacraments of the law.b In this manner too Alexanderc ordered ten orators to be sent away from Athens, so that the city, bereft of advocates, would lie open to the greed of the foreigners. And there are many other cases like this. In the moral sense, the ‘feet’ of the soul are actions on this earth, with which she runs along the path of this life. The Lord says of them: He that is washed once, needeth not but to wash his feet (John 13, 10). For not the least trace of original sin should go on sticking to someone who has once been bathed in holy baptism. But he needs to wash his feet, that is, wash away by penitence actions on this earth that make them grow dusty on his daily passage along the way of the world. The Bride fears that feet washed in penitence will grow dirty if she leaves her Bridegroom’s embrace and goes out in public, as she says in the Song of Songs: I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them? (S. of S. 5, 3). The Bride ‘washed her feet’ because she wept for lax actions in the past during her journey through this world. But when she is called by her beloved to go out and take charge of others, she is afraid that by going along treacherous paths she may again commit sins she had put behind her. Yet filthiness is on our feet because, unless God stops us, we press on to the last moment of our lives, constantly or rather stubbornly, with the evil-doings on which we started. And, obviously, this is so because we do not remember our end. The blessed Jerome says, ‘The man who always bears in mind that Cf. Judg. 15-16. Cf. 1 Kgs. 4, 4-11. c  Philip of Macedon, in fact (cf. Isidore, Etym. 1, 40, 7). a 

b 

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I, 9 (10.-13.)

13.

he will die finds it easy to leave everything behind.’a But that can be put another way: ‘The man who never bears in mind that he will die finds it easy to embrace every kind of sin.’ Certainly, so far as I can judge, no one is so reckless as to fail to bear in mind that he will die one day. But if a sinner does happen to embark on some good course, he weakens, either in secret, out of greed for glory, or openly, out of a desire to show off.b Alternatively, he falls short out of laziness; for he is called away from the good by luxury, or harassed by the cares of wealth, or soothed by the hope of a longer life and of finding mercy. What is more wretched than this, to neglect what you have, and to promise yourself something of which you have no knowledge?c ‘I believe, and with every confidence,’ d that on what day soever a sinner shall turn and groan aloud,e all his sins are forgiven. But our life passes while what we promise is awaited. Illness creeps upon us, death approaches with slow steps. Time flies, and slips by without our noticing. Meanwhile, if we sin, the more guilt accrues, the more is lost to life. If we reform, the time that should have been spent on attaining gloryf is used up in advance on forgiveness. It is more glorious for a soldier not to retreat than to return to the field after the victory is won. But if by some chance he is compelled to flee, let him return soon Jerome, Epist. 53, 11, 3. i.e. he fails in his good works if he is motivated by a secret desire to win glory by them, or if he openly shows off about them; in either case his improper motivation disqualifies him from doing real good. In the next words, the sinner is said to be too lazy to perform his good actions properly, for various external reasons. c  William, rather incoherently, mocks those who put off doing good for the moment in the hope they will live long enough to do it in the end, or be forgiven for not doing it. For this view of hope, see also I, 21, 9 (I, 3270-3271). d  Vergil, Aen. 4, 12. e  Cf. Ezek. 33, 12. f  Not as in I, 9, 12 (I, 1459), where William speaks of glory sought on earth. Here he is talking of spiritual glory, to be attained in heaven. For this cf. e.g. I, 2, 16 ‘how much more beautiful, then, how much more conducive to the attainment of glory’; I, 7, 10 ‘she strives after glory, anxious to take first prize for virtue’; I, 10, 6 ‘for those who possess them, they [the virtues] are a source of grace in the present, of glory in the future’. For the contrast with forgiveness cf. Prol., 4 ‘a canticle for the glory of the just, lamentations for the forgiveness of the penitent’; II, 4, 2 ‘the one always chastises with a view to forgiveness and often to glory’. a 

b 

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to retrieve his virtue, let him win a swift victory, let him make up for his bad luck by showing bravery. The voluptuary quickly turns to flight, the coward is slow to return to battle.a She is wonderfully cast down, not having a comforter, the Holy Spirit, that is. He is rightly called a comforter, for He rouses to penitence one who has fallen into wrong, and to penitence strengthens one who mourns for the loss of family property.b Happy is he, and in need of nothing, who has a comforter like this! Nothing is lacking to those who fear God, or to those who love Him in very truth. But if a man has what he thinks enough, he is rich. Now to one who fears God, essential food and clothing are enough. Therefore to those who fear God nothing is lacking.c Hence the words: ‘The poor man is king in secret, for he has God.’ d On the other hand, the soul that sins, especially one that persists in sinning, is cast down wonderfully, and very shamefully too, so that she is pressed down by the breath from the divine mouthe and rolls in the mud. Nor does she have a comforter to treat her for her lapse or console her for her grief. If she is sensible, then, let her cry whole-heartedly to God: Behold, O Lord, my affliction, because the enemy is lifted up. Behold, I say, Lord God Almighty, the mock made of your creature by that enemy of ours, who deserted you of old.f Therefore have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us: for we are greatly filled with contempt (Ps. 122, 3). Rouse us to do good. Our fall has till now made laugh: let our being lifted up from this state cause him pain. 1, 10. Jod. The enemy hath put out his hand to all her desirable things, for she hath seen the Gentiles The argument seems to be: It is better not to sin at all than to try to reform after having sinned. But if you do sin, return quickly to the battle for good: be neither voluptuary nor coward. b  res familiaris is apparently the divine status properly belonging to the soul but lost by sin, her forfeited inheritance. c  Cf. Ps. 33, 10. d  Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. 8, 3, 296. e  i.e. punished by the Holy Spirit. Cf. III, 52-54, 8 [after the resurrection] ‘Christ poured out on them in person the Paraclete with the breath of His holy mouth’ (reprising the giving of the breath of life at Gen. 2, 7: cf. I, 11, 10). f  i.e. the Devil. a 

96

14.

15.

1.

I, 9 (13.) – I, 10 (2.)

2.

enter into her sanctuary, of whom thou gavest commandment that they should not enter into thy church. Jod means ‘beginning’, as I said before,a because here as it were makes a new start on what he has to say. For though the misery of these disasters has been assimilated, complaint now breaks out again. It may be that it was just the bad luck to which humans are subject that her friends deserted the people of Jerusalem. It may be that it was just the result of human savagery that their enemies destroyed them. But the bitterest thing of all is that the pride of the foreigners swelled so high that they did not even refrain from polluting what was holy. Indeed the enemy, whom we understand to be Nebuchadnezzar, after destroying the walls, despatched an armed bandb to set fire to the one remaining desirable thing, the temple. The leader of that company was Nebuzar-adan, the chief of the cooks; obeying his orders with alacrity, he shamelessly entered the revered place, cruelly turned it upside down, swept up all the young men who had skill in any trade, and took them away.c When they saw this, the Jews were not surprisingly aggrieved that a gentile should get away with wrecking things which they themselves were not allowed to see without punishment. They remembered Nadab and Abihu being blasted by fire from heaven because they had offered strange fire with an assiduity that was reckless, however dutiful.d They remembered that a veil was stretched out in front of the sanctuary to prevent it even being seen.e They remembered Uzzah being put to death because he had tried to do his duty by the ark when it was tottering.f It was also relevant that in the law of Moses the Lord, while allowing certain related peoples entry to the sanctu-

I, 9, 1. William’s misit manum picks up the wording of the lemma, giving it a different sense. c  Cf. 4 Kgs. 25, 8-20. d  Cf. Num. 3, 4. e  Cf. Exod. 27, 20. f  Cf. 2 Kgs. 6, 6-7; 1 Chr. 13, 9-10. a 

b 

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ary after the third and fourth generations, had barred all Gentiles in perpetuity.a So a bitter complaint went up to God: Gentiles had entered His church despite His command, and a foreign general, whose job it was to satisfy the royal gluttony by flavouring food and making lavish hot meals,b a man in fact of the lowest status, had dared to touch the sacred vessels, not merely handling them out of curiosity but breaking them sacrilegiously. Along with scorn for men, then, went insult to God; a religion that seemed incapable of helping its devotees was being trampled underfoot. The spleen of the Jews was aroused by the scale of the disaster, the worthlessness of the culprit, and the absence of divine vengeance on him. It makes a lot of difference not just what you suffer, but also from whom and for how long you suffer it. You can put up with something more easily if you are faced with the shamelessness of a rich man rather than the impudence of a pauper. Disease is easier to bear if you have hopes that medicine is near at hand; having no prospect of a remedy worsens the pain. What is more, the enemies of the church, the demons, Gentiles and heretics who harry her with their hatred, put out their hands to all her desirable things. How many, once the high princes of the church, have, at the touch of a wicked hand—corrupted, that is, by being terrorised or by being led on by flattery—become in the one case apostates, in the other heresiarchs! So the Devil especially attacks those whom he sees especially flourishing in the church, bloating them with knowledge or making them thin by their way of life. Only a few, whom God loved, have been able to escape his hands: those in whom a good life associated with a good intellect have excited the wonder of the centuries. For what would be beyond the daring of a disloyal brigand, a greedy extortioner,c who did not hesitate to hand over to His death the Lord, on whom the angels (as it is written) desire to look (1 Pet. 1, 12)? Everything, indeed, that is ever called desirable is plain to see in Him. If you Cf. Deut. 23, 7-8. The meaning is quite uncertain (lit. ‘heat pots with more oil’). Perhaps the use of unctum (‘rich food’) in Horace, Ars poet. 422 is relevant. c  Judas. a 

b 

98

3.

4.

I, 10 (2.-5.)

5.

are looking for wisdom, which like a treasure to be desired resteth in the mouth of the wise,a in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.b If bodily beauty, He is beautiful above the sons of men.c If sanctity, His God hath anointed Him above His fellows.d If a source of enjoyment, He is Himself the saving refectory of men and angels.e None of these things could prevent the Devil from aiming the stings of his deception at Him. Wherefore the church is right to groan and raise her cry to heaven, because her enemies enter into her sanctuary and pass through the church in defiance of God’s command. For demons enter into the sanctuary when they give a Christian over to heresy or an unworthy manner of life. But the Lord forbade such men to enter into His church, when through the apostle He said: Give not place to the devil (Eph. 4, 27). Also: Be sober and watch: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist ye, strong in the faith (1 Pet. 5, 8-9). The heretic too enters into the sanctuary when he ties up the unsophisticated Christian by a flow of argumentation and a knot of crafty speech. But the Lord barred such men from His temple when He said through the apostle: A man that is a heretic, after the first and third admonition, avoid: knowing his father is a man (Tit. 3, 10-11).f Also: If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you (2 John 1, 10). Equally, Gentiles have entered into the sanctuary when by their persecutions they have all but overthrown . These the Lord barred from entering the temple when He said: Cast ye not your pearls before feet (Matt. 7, 6). Also: Go ye not into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter in their sight (Matt. 10, 5).

Cf. Prov. 21, 20 + 14, 33. Cf. Col. 2, 3. c  Cf. Ps. 44, 3. d  Cf. Hebr. 1, 9. e  Cf. Mark 14, 14. f  The last words of the citation are mysterious. a 

b 

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Morally, the desirable things of the soul are those which arouse longing for the supernal and excitea disgust for the transitory. Desirable are the virtues; for those who possess them, they are a source of grace in the present, of glory in the future, and in both of joy. Justice is ‘gracious’; it commends a man to other men for his uprightness, and raises him aloft in the eyes of those on high. Fortitude is loveable; it bears present misfortunes with patience, and awaits eternal felicity with long-suffering. Temperance is to be wished for; it prolongs this life and exalts the soul to heaven. Prudenceb is sweet; it looks to life here and hereafter with a view to salvation, making sure a man does nothing imprudently that might lead him to condemn himself in the future, or entangle himself in serious and perpetual loss for little or no gain. But to these desirable things the Devil puts out his hand when he subverts justice, breaks down fortitude, weakens temperance, sends prudence reeling. In this way all the desirable things of the soul perish; for when they are undermined all the virtues supplementary to themc are nullified. Now the ‘hands’ of the Enemy are either the open persuasion of his minions, by which he caresses the souls of the wretched with slippery flatteries, or the hidden breath by which he works his way into them with the poison of temptation. They therefore drink greedily of a drug that tastes sweet for the moment, but that will, failing God’s help, burst forth and soon destroy them. These are the deceptions by which the Enemy creeps into the heart of man, and makes of him a brothel that should have been God’s sanctuary. In the apostle’s words, The temple of God is holy, which you are (1 Cor. 3, 17), and Know you not, that you are the temple of God, and that the Holy Spirit dwelleth in you? (1 Cor. 3, 16). But it often happens that the individual soul, or the church as a whole, turns to God and cries: Arise, O God, and judge thy own cause: remember thy reproaches with which the foolish man hath reThis gives the right sense, but the exact Latin word is uncertain. Or ‘wisdom’. c  For the ‘ancillary’ (appendices) virtues see Mir. pp. 48-49. See István P. Bejczy, The Cardinal Virtues, pp. 291-296 for various different groups of subordinate virtues. a 

b 

100

6.

7.

8.

I, 10 (6.-10.)

9.

10.

proached thee all the day. Forget not the voices of thy enemies: the pride of them that hate thee ascendeth continually (Ps. 73, 22-23). This pride the same psalm had driven home more strikingly and clearly in the earlier words: And they that hate thee have made their boasts, in the midst of thy solemnity (Ps. 73, 4). That is, just when the soul is especially anxious to please God by the solemn display of her virtues, the demons exult that they are bringing back at their pleasure palms of glory from her overthrow. And just afterwards: As with axes in a wood of trees, they have cut down at once the gates thereof (Ps. 73, 5-6), as if to say: They cut down within the soul the Christian faith itself, the gate of everlasting good. For he who does not live well cannot believe well. You may believe the apostle on this point: They profess that they know God, but in their works they deny him (Tit. 1, 16). And this as in a wood of trees. They attack Christians as they do pagans, who do not fear to ‘run to wood’ against God by their blasphemies, and as it were to strike heaven itself with menacing head. And in case you thought the fellinga was easy, added: With axe and hatchet they have brought it down (Ps. 73, 6). For the axe cuts down big things with violence, while the hatchet goes for small things as well, with close attention. In this way the Devil not merely presses home a vehement attack on the soul’s obvious virtues: he also uses subtlety to encompass the downfall of our least thoughts. Wherefore, while God’s grace is delayed, the soul remains vulnerable to vices that plunder her like enemy pirates. But if ever by some chance the clear light of eternity does shine forth, she will forthwith brandish the weapons of faith, and shake her right hand victorious against the foe. Happy change! Glorious trophy! It is well, best of kings, it is well, I say, Lord Jesus, if a humble man who trusts in you is raised up and the proud Devil is brought down. May you always practise for these battles, and win this victory! For it is one worthy of you, beneficial to mortals, and welcome to your angels. To this remark, you yourself take the stand as

This is apparently the connotation (cf. deiectione above and esp. deiecerunt below); the Devil is ‘felled’ in § 10 (deicitur). a 

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a trustworthy witness: I say to you, there is joy to the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance (Luke 15, 10; cf. 7). 1, 11. Caph. All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given all their precious things for food to relieve the soul. See, O Lord, and consider, for I am become vile. Caph means ‘hand’. Now in the holy scriptures ‘hand’ is understood of the power of God or man. Of God: Who brought out Israel from among them: with a mighty hand and with a high arm (Ps. 135, 11-12). Of man: The hand of Ahicam the son of Saphan was with Jeremias, that he should not be delivered into the hands of the people (Jer. 26, 24). Because therefore the wicked, misusing the power of free will, shamelessly enraged Him who gave it to them, and because He in return to terrible effect poured out on the presumptuous the strength of His power, ‘hand’ is correctly attached to these words, which describe the weight with which the hand of God was heavy upon them even after the captivity. Hence we have elsewhere too: For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still (Isa. 5, 25). The common people, those at least who were spared by the victors, not out of pity but out of satiety, quite apart from the fact that they had lost their native land and were living in exile, were also the victims of sore famine. Some had to beg for their daily bread, some sold off cheap anything that remained of their old possessions, in order to purchase food: not in the hope of buying delicacies, but just to scratch a life, procure sustenance, and bear up against hunger. The relentless foreign vendor pressed them hard in their famished state: the more he saw the wretches needed, the higher the price he set and the harder the bargain he drove, even though what they sought was not something to encourage gluttony but something to stave off hunger. Still, it is credible that, at such a troubled time for the nation, there were some Jews who sold to others for profit what they snatched from their own mouths (a poet said of such people ‘when gold is produced, sellers are forthcoming, though hungry themselves’).a What a misfortune for a man to go a 

Lucan 4, 97 (tr. J. D. Duff).

102

1.

2.

3.

I, 10 (10.) – I, 11 (5.)

4.

5.

hungry so long as he stuffs his purse, to die so long as he stores away the cash! But, as for the better motivated, they would bring out all they had in their store-rooms if it meant they could relieve hunger. Money ought to be ‘vile’ to someone whose vitals are shaken by famine. So it was because of troubles like this that the countenance of a once famous city grew pale, her glorious power faded, the acclamations of the people were silenced. So, as murmurs gradually grow into complaints, the city cries to the Lord in the person of her sons: See, O Lord, and consider, for I am become vile. When she asks God to see and consider, she is expressing the feelings of someone who prays anxiously; such a one is not satisfied to say what he wants once only: he has to repeat his request over and over again. Nor does the city ask for anything more than that should see: for she knows that God has eyes that He directs at the wicked, but also eyes that He turns on the converted. If He were to cast the latter on her, with an impulse of kindness, she would at once conceive the hope that her vileness was passing into glory. In the allegorical sense the people of the church sigh and seek bread because there are few or none who proffer the alms of church doctrine to the hungry. Alms are well compared to bread. For bread [panis] is so called (in Greek pan means ‘all’) either because it is served up with all food, or because it nourishes all living creatures alike. Similarly, church doctrine is suitable for all ages and ranks; it is stored away in the stomach of memory, and digested to maintain our health. The Christian people seeks with sighs for this bread, and fails to find it, when a preacher is too ignorant or lazy for active preaching. This happens often because of a barrenness of educated men in the church; but hunger of this kind is particularly prevalent at the present time. Hence the Lord says through the mouth of the prophet: Behold I will send forth a famine on the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord (Amos 8, 11). How severe this famine can be was portrayed with his usual choiceness of expression by the blessed Pope Gregory when he expoundeda the verse in the Gospel The harvest indeed is great, the a 

Gregory the Great, In euang. 17, 3.

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labourers are few (Matt. 9, 37; Luke 10, 2): ‘Here is something I cannot say without great sorrow: although there is an audience for the good, there is a shortage of men to speak it. For look about you: the world is full of priests, yet there are very few found to work in the harvest of God. We have undertaken the office of priest, but we do not fulfil the duties of that office.’ Of this hunger the psalmist says: They (the Jews without doubt) shall return at evening (that is, at the end of the world) and shall suffer hunger like dogs (Ps. 58, 15), that is, like a domestic animal used to being fed at the family table. Then, freeing themselves from the cycle of error that had been whirling them around (compare elsewhere: The wicked walk round about (Ps. 11, 9)), theya will go carefully into the doctrines of holy men, who are citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, or, rather, are Jerusalem herself. If they satisfy their hunger, well and good. But if not, they will murmur, that is, they will grieve. Hence here: All her people sigh, they seek bread. But how eagerly the people of the church crave for this bread, and what efforts it makes to partake of that refreshment, is shown in what follows: They have given all their precious things for food to relieve the soul. Nothing is more precious in a Christian, nothing more welcome to God, than a single-minded concentration on Holy Scripture. Of this is said: If thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be lightsome (Matt. 6, 22; Luke 11, 34). This concentration God thinks worthy of His kindly embrace, on this He bestows Himself with indulgent approval. And when a man of the church presents this to God in order to obtain divine food,b he is selling his most precious possession for a good return to himself, seeking somehow or other to give his soul relief, even if he cannot altogether satisfy her greed. This is why the church, blushing for the shortage of teachers, cries to God: See, O Lord, and consider, for I am become vile. It is a mark of the worst famine, of extreme ‘vileness’, when preaching fails, in whole or in part. The common people easily forget what is not constantly dinned into them by The people of the church at any period. The people give their attention to the word of God in order to be fed by Him (as in the text the people sell their most precious possessions to buy bread). a 

b 

104

6.

7.

I, 11 (5.-8.)

8.

their teachers. Of this the speaker of the following words was well aware: Reprove, entreat, rebuke: be intent in season, out of season (2 Tim. 4, 2). And he supplied the reason: For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: and will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables (2 Tim. 4, 3-4). Who would deny that this itching of ears is today everywhere a grave irritant? For so many are the enveloping vicesa of the world into which we are plunged by chance or choice that unless we are goaded by constant admonition we shall never free ourselves; or if we do, it will be too late. A preacher then must take great care to ensure, not only that the shoot of faith, nurtured in the mind, does not perish, but also that it develops into rich fruit. This will only happen, with God’s aid, if, as the blessed Fulgentius says,b constant oral admonishment is not lacking, and if suppliant prayer does not sleep in the heart. Let supply the bread of doctrine from without, and pour the antidote of prayer within. Nor is it absurd to refer these words to the soul, if, to quote Ezekiel,c if so be she will turn from evil and hear, if so be she will forbear. The people, begging in a holy frame of mind, seeks the soul’s refreshment, either the bread of which I have spoken above,d or else the bread of which it is said: Man ate the bread of angels (Ps. 77, 25), and also: Thou gavest them bread from heaven, having in it all that is delicious, and every taste of sweetness (Wisd. 16, 20). So too He said of Himself: The bread of God cometh down from heaven, and giveth life to the world. Him hath God, the Father, sealed (John 6, 33 + 27). For He is the refreshment of the angels: they long to see Him, and He satisfies them with the richest possible taste. He came forth from the most secret corner of His Father’s bosom, to be the food of men and to stimulate them by the hope of eternal life to join the company of the angels. Him hath God, a  Cf. TLL s.v. inuolucrum 260, 52-60; in our work, I, 114-115 (custom) and 10351036 (sin). b  Serm. 3, 4. c  Cf. Ezek. 2, 5. d  Cf. I, 11, 4.

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the Father, sealed, sealing Him (as it were) with the seal of a sanctity excellent above that of all other men. His love is more pleasant to the taste than anything that delights the palate of a gourmet of this world. Aside from that love, all that a glutton seizes on is no more than a punishment, for it has to be acquired by hard work; far from pleasant too, for it slips away at once, and harsh, for it has to be paid for over all eternity. When a soul, tiring of the husks of this world, which distend but do not satisfy, desires this bread with famished jaws, she toils when she looks for it, groans within if she fails to find it; in order to win it, by the grace of God, she gives whatever she knows to be most precious in herself, most welcome to God. What that is, the psalmist reveals when he says: A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit (Ps. 50, 19), and the apostle : I beseech you that you present your bodies a holy sacrifice, pleasing unto God (Rom. 12, 1). This is the sacrifice of himself that offers, to give himself relief, when he says to God: O Lord, be thou merciful to me: heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee (Ps. 40, 5). For to sin against God is a sickness of the soul, or rather her death. It is a remarkable example of figurative language to say that something essentially immortal dies when she does not give worthy service to the Author of her life. But only when she begins to be penitent does she show slight signs of life: having changed direction now, she may hope to live fully in the future. Hope thus gives relief to the soul for the present; in another world, actuality satisfies her in all fullness. The soul then, hating continued life in an exile unworthy of her, and unable to bear the shame she incurs, is right to cry out to God: ‘See, O Lord, and consider, for I am become vile. Have I then, whom God deigned to create, who dwelt once in paradise, endowed with reason, practised in arts, ruler of the greater world by means of the lesser,a have I come to such a pass of misery that I disgust myself, that I am reproached by angels and laughed at by The little world is the microcosm, the individual (cf. e.g. Bede, De tab. 3, p. 123, 1176-1177), who by virtue of reason and mastery of the arts can be said to be the ruler of the greater world, the macrocosm. a 

106

9.

10.

I, 11 (8.) – I, 12 (2.)

1.

2.

demons? I am no vile part of your work, yet I am tossed on the seas of fortune. But look down from heaven, and see, and visit this soul,a and restore her to the dignity she had when you first created her. Make me move as the higher things to which you summon me move, so that, just as “the stars roll unshaken in their gliding courses”,b so I may always return to you in a regular orbit. It is right, and worthy of your sublime nature, that I, who was by your breath thrust into this clay, may by your grace carry that same breath to heaven with me.’ 1, 12. Lamed. All ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow! For he hath made a vintage of me, as the Lord spoke in the day of his wrath. Lamed means ‘discipline’ or ‘of the heart’, because it is the mark of a disciplined heart to recognise its sins and to lay them out in person rather than through an advocate. For from here on, almost to the end of the alphabet, the city utters her complaints without interruption, speaking not through the prophet but in her own person, using metaphor. She varies her expression with quite remarkable beauty, now examining her conscience closely, now addressing her hearers directly,c now trying to turn God to forgiveness. All this is included in the precepts of rhetoric that aim to mitigate the reader’s boredom, so that while the language is flowery and wanton the hearer feels less distaste. Besides, it is characteristic of grief that it knows no limit or steady course. A grieving mind thinks on many things; similarly, the speech that gives utterance to the mind’s thoughts has many twists and turns. The city therefore, making her citizens speak for her, pours out her words to passers-by; she is not concerned to limit the noise she makes so long as she does justice to her grief: O all ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow. Such a cry is in agreement with common practice. It is natural enough that when afflicted by evil we implore the help even of Cf. Ps. 79, 15. Lucan 2, 268. c  The figure apostrophe. a 

b 

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strangers. It is no small relief from pain that someone should feel for our woes and make them his own. It is then that the tumult of sorrow oppressing our hearts is dissipated upon those we meet, as though everyone who goes by had time to listen to our laments. It is then that what we suffer is magnified by our own assessment of it, while we discount what others suffer. It is then that we swear that no one has had so much to put up with as we, no one has ever borne what we are bearing. This is why Jerusalem complains that she has been forsaken beyond comparison, though we read that worse has happened to many cities, which have been levelled with the ground, leaving no traces ever after to show where they had stood. But Jerusalem was only uninhabited for seventy years,a and soon grew so prosperous that she missed none of her previous beauty, and had nothing of her earlier opulence to sigh for. I can assure my readers that I make this assertion with trustworthy witnesses to back me up, Haggai and Zechariah. Haggai: Great shall be the glory of this last house more than of the first, saith the Lord of hosts (Hag. 2, 10); and Zechariah: As you were a curse among the Gentiles, O house of Juda: so will I save you, and you shall be a blessing. As I purposed to afflict you, when your fathers had provoked me to wrath, saith the Lord: so turning again I have thought in these days to do good to Jerusalem, and the house of Juda (Zech. 8. 13-15). Or perhaps, when we read that there is no sorrow like to the sorrow of Jerusalem, we should understand it thus: If nations and cities with no knowledge of the true God are ruined, that can be thought a reparable loss. What is not to be thought equal to any other cause for lament is the fall of a city which could look back to the foundation of the Law and had been the nurse of prophets, and the burning down of a temple of God without parallel in the world. That is why we have: The Lord hath made a vintage of me, in the day of his wrath, as he spoke. For just as the ‘swelling buds on the shoot’ b make the vine attractive both to look at and in the prospect it gives of benefit to come, so See e.g. Augustine, Ciu. 18, 26, quoting the prophecy in Jer. 25, 11 (alluded to in I, 17, 2); see also II, 6, 2. b  Vergil, Ecl. 7, 48. a 

108

3.

4.

I, 12 (2.-6.)

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6.

the nobility of her great men and the size of her population made the city an object of terror to neighbouring nations, while at the same time the famous and imposing temple made her revered. But once the nobles were killed and the temple burned down, things changed: honour gave place to disgrace, veneration to scorn. Now the text has taken the liberty of saying The day of the wrath of the Lord. It employs abusio.a For time does not pass for God, nor do emotions of this kind affect Him, as everyone can see clearly by the light of conscience; and the writings of our forebears stress these points too often for me to need to remind you. But, because it is to our benefit, the divine pen employs human phrasing, and uses our words in the service of our understanding. But if you should enquire when the Lord spoke these things, there are two possible interpretations. This ‘speaking’ by God may be His immoveable justice, which ensures that whoever sins pays for it, here or in the future, without respect of person. As the psalm says: God hath spoken once (that is, immovably), these two things have I heard, that power belongeth to God, and mercy to thee, O Lord; for thou wilt render to every man according to his works (Ps. 61, 12-13). Alternatively, you should understand by the ‘speaking’ of God the threatening language of the prophets, as in Deuteronomy: They have provoked me with that which is no god, and have angered me with their vanities: and I will provoke them with that which is no people, and will vex them with a foolish nation (Deut. 32, 21). And a little later: Without, the sword shall lay them waste, and terror within, both the young man and the virgin, the suckling child with the man in years (Deut. 32, 25). Then too the prophet Micah: Sion shall be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall be a heap of stones, and the mountain of the house of the Lord the high places of the forests (Mic. 3, 12).b Allegorically, those ‘pass by the way’ who are free of the dust of the world, and run their way unencumbered, treading with feet that do not stumble in the footsteps of Him who said: I am the a  Or catachresis, the misapplication of a word. The word furor is misused in that the Lord does not feel this (or any other) emotion (cf. I, 12, 8; I, 17, 7; II, 1, 3). b  As in II, 17, 2, William’s wording is affected by the citation of Micah in Jer. 26, 18.

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way, the truth, and the life (John 14, 6). To these the church, in the shape of her weaker members, cries that they should for a while stop still in that passage to the heights, stop, I say, and grant their attention kindly to those who share their faith, coming down to their level by suffering with them. Let them attend indeed, and in the apostle’s words stand themselves and take heed lest they fall;a and let them raise up by their consolations others who are cast down in sadness. Otherwise, if they prove to be trees with leaves running riot, that are proud of themselves but bear no fruit for others, they shall be cut down, and cast into the fire.b Let them attend therefore to the pain of their mother as she says through the apostle: Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire? (2 Cor. 11, 29). Wherefore let them pour out on sinners their bowels of pity, so that they may be among those of whom the same apostle says: If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it (1 Cor. 12, 26). For the Lord hath made a vintage of me. It is not that He Himself brings open persecution or secret temptation on the church. Rather, while staying quiet in Himself, He allows men to exercise their free will; if they use it well, they are rewarded, if badly, they are punished. Now a vintage is made of the church when she is left destitute by the deaths of her sons, or saddened by their behaviour: those sons at least who previously used to shine, like delightful bunches of grapes, in uprightness of life and in abundance of eloquence. Similar to this is what Isaiah says: And it (the church) shall be as when one gathereth in the harvest that which remained (Isa. 17, 5), and a little later: And [the fruit thereof that] shall be left upon it, [shall be] as one cluster of grapes (Isa. 17, 6), as if to say: No more teachers shall remain in the church (they are compared to the harvest and a grape cluster because they provide food and drink) than ears remain after the harvesters or clusters after the vintagers, if they escape the attention of those gathering them. In the day of his wrath. God seems, and is said, to be angry when, because of the wrongdoer’s sins, He either makes him smart with a  b 

Cf. 1 Cor. 10, 12. Cf. e.g. Matt. 3, 10.

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the sting of temporal harm or abandons him to perpetual punishment. Yet He, as I said earlier,a is not Himself touched by bodily passions. Holy Writ borrows the names of these passions and transfers them to the nature of God, because none of us can make a move to punish a guilty man unless he is first himself moved in his mind. However long-suffering one who administers punishment may be, he cannot but be subject to anger, which shows up in a change of expression or tone of voice, or some movement of the limbs. Now the Lord in His own person spoke of this vintage of the church when He said: Then shall many be scandalized: and shall betray one another: and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce many. And because iniquity shall abound, the charity of many shall grow cold (Matt. 24, 10-12). And later the apostle says: In the last days shall come dangerous times. Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, lovers of pleasure more than of God: having an appearance indeed of godliness, but denying the power thereof (1 Tim. 3, 1-5). Is vintage too little made of the church when these things take place? By no means! So let those who ought to comfort her pay attention, and see that there is no sorrow like to her sorrow. For such sorrow was not felt either by the Gentiles or by the synagogue, which in the person of their devotees did not notice or worry about perils of this kind. Hence, as so often happens, the greater the understanding the greater the sadness. (That ‘vineyard’ once meant ‘synagogue’, but now means ‘church’, is shown both in the psalmsb and in the canticle of Isaiah:c their testimony I here pass over, for brevity’s sake.) In the moral sense, of course, we may understand the words as applicable to the soul: when sore distressed she cries out to those passing by on the road, those who do not engage in dusty works I, 12, 5. e.g. Ps. 79, 9 and 15. c  e.g. Isa. 5, 1-4. a 

b 

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and who avoid everything illicit, followers of Him of whom it was said (Ps. 109, 7): He drinks of the torrent (that is, the cup of death, which gulps down everyone with its rapacious eddies and greedy throat) in the way (that is, in passing). For others resurrection is put off for many aeons; but He hurried on His, at once on the third day. In the same way, holy men, even if, being men, they may fall into sin, that is into the death of the soul, at once—for the grace of God lifts them up—emerge from snares and pass by treacherous places. Therefore the soul, when at her lowest, cries out to those who are raised aloft by their lives and made merciful by their reflection on the human condition, saying: I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from whence help may come to me. My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth (Ps. 120, 1-2). For she knows she cannot attain that high place where divinity resides, unless the intercession of the saints goes on making the ascent manageable for her in her striving. She says, therefore, and truly, that there is no sorrow like to her sorrow. Nothing is so much to be bewailed, nothing so worthy of lament, as for a soul, runaway from her sweet Creator, to hand herself over to be the client of a cruel tyrant, sell herself as a serf, prostitute herself as a whore. No less to be lamented is that when she longs to slough off her disgraceful servitude, she never or almost never has the strength to break the tangled knots, unless with the aid of God’s great strength. This is because she has lost the vintage of virtues: the keeper of Israel, who neither slumbers nor sleeps,a refuses His solicitous guard, offended as He is by the frequency of her overweening sins. Further, there are three things that harm and spoil grapes, which deceive and frustrate the prayers of the locals when they are hurt either by icy cold from the north, or by the burning Zephyr,b or by thick cloud and rain. Similarly, the soul loses her fruits either because she is breathed upon by the evil fire of the Devil, which struck the sheep of Job and his servants and consumed them,c or Cf. Ps. 120, 4. Normally a west wind, though that would not usually be hot in England. There was, or had been, a vineyard at Malmesbury (GP 260, 1). c  Cf. Job 1, 16. a 

b 

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because she lacks God’s warmth, of which the Lord Jesus says: I am come to cast fire on the earth: and what will I, but that it blaze? (Luke 12, 49). And because of this, while she lacks the fire that burns away the rust of sins and abounds in the fire that nourishes them, she becomes cloudy and dirty with the slimy filth of vice. And this is the wrath of the Lord that a Christian should most fear, when He permits the soul to throw off the reins and rush recklessly into any and every crime. Unhappy and much to be bewailed is the man in whose way God sets no barrier of adversity to stop him pitching himself headlong into the abyss of evil. Of this wrath God Himself says through the prophet: I will not visit upon your daughters when they shall commit fornication, and upon your daughters in law when they shall commit adultery (Hos. 4, 14). Yet it is not hatred but love, not anger or wrath, when He chides sinners, in order to restore them to soundness of mind. So He says: Those I love, I rebuke and chastise (Rev. 3, 19); and also: I will visit their iniquities with a rod: and their sins with stripes. But my mercy I will not take away from him (Ps. 88, 33-34). For what son is there who is not chastised by his father? Let us then love the kindness of Him who corrects us, reproving to reform, striking to heal. Let us welcome His judgement, let us submit to His sentence, whatever it may be, so that the furnace of tribulations may boil away past mistakes. Let there be no murmuring or whispering, in case the penalty is doubled and our complaint disbelieved.a Let us delay not to be converted from day to day,b in case we may be thought to deserve a harsh verdict just because no chiding brings us back into line. What is the point of loving things fleeting and transitory? What is there in a man that is his own, and not another’s?c If you say that he is well born, you are praising his parents. He is rich: I do not trust fortune. He is strong: he will be worn down by illness. He is swift: he is on the way to old age. He is handsome: wait a little while, and he will not be. Let us instead seek for the eternal grace of God, which never The meaning of the final phrase is uncertain. Cf. Ecclus. 5, 8. c  The eloquent passage that follows (to ‘ageing’) owes much to Apuleius, Socr. a 

b 

23.

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forsakes us, which is not inherited from one’s father, not dependent on chance, or fleeting because it is bodily, or mutable because it is subject to ageing. Instead, O man, I say, exercise yourself in the sort of thoughts that concentrate you and call you back within yourself, not the sort that drag you outside and scatter you. Do you feel exalted by piles of money and a noble lineage? Are you puffed up by bodily beauty and a string of honours? Look at yourself, and see that you are mortal: you will rot into earth, crumble into ash. Be warned by the fate of your forebears, who lived in similar pomp and circumstance. Where are they gone, those who were attended by so many retainers? Where are they gone, those who boasted a reputation for flowing eloquence? Where the socialitesa and the coiners of witticisms? Where the leaders of armies? Where the satraps and tyrants? Is not all dust? Is not all cinders? Little enough has been recorded in writing to redound to their glory and survive to be remembered! Ask tombs: will they bring back the soul as she flies away? Try to tell, if you can, which was the master and which the slave, which the rich and which the poor. Is not everything equally subject to corruption and decay? Remember then how fragile you are, and never be proud. And you will remember if you take a look at yourself. 1, 13. Mem. From above he hath sent fire into my bones and hath chastised me; he hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me back; he hath made me desolate, wasted with sorrow all the day long. To complete the sense, mem, which means ‘from them’,b has to be joined to the previous letter, to give: ‘Discipline of the heartc from them.’ For it is from them, the things which expounds here and above, that discipline comes forth, so that those who did not wish to follow God when led on by blandishments may follow Him, even late in the day, on the urging of the goad of justice. To them is said: Return, ye transgressors, to the a  circulatores can hardly here be ‘mountebanks’ or any of the other low persons offered by the lexica. Perhaps they are persons able to shine in circuli, groups of socialisers. b  Lit. ‘them themselves’. c  Though earlier these are given as alternatives (I, 12, 1). See also just below.

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heart (Isa. 46, 8). And again: Vexation shall make you understand what you hear (Isa. 28, 19). And yet again: He that is hardened in mind shall fall into evil (Prov. 28, 14). So ‘the discipline of the heart from them’ refers to those things which the citizen of Jerusalem goes on to say have befallen him, the evils which he was suffering ‘from above’, that is from the supreme and inscrutable judgement of God. Wherefore that is seen to be bearable and just which is hurled from on high by Him whose judgement is always hidden but can never be unjust. ‘In the furnace of tribulations,’ he says, ‘the Lord burned my more solid parts,a that is my great men, who, hard in their high spirit and unbending in their pride, had boasted that they would never surrender to adverse circumstances. But because in good times we venture to do many things whose memory is erased and suppressed by adversity, the divine fire has easily bowed down that which human luxury previously raised high. Hence it “hath chastised me”, training me, if I had any sense, so that when I saw great men afflicted I should have no hope for the lower orders. For the ruin of the higher is a warning for the lower.b The man who feels his head ache can put little trust in the other parts of his body. So if the common herd, signified by “feet”, looked for safety in flight, and went off to the mountains, or hid in gaping caverns or behind closed doors—whatever happened, they fell into the toils of the Babylonians. No delay! The ordinary man was dragged back with a rope round his throat, to glut the eyes of the cruel victor by his own death, or to look on as others died, or at least to be led into captivity and drag out a life he longed to lose. I reject comfort, I embrace a sorrow that can be assuaged by no passage of time; naturally, when neither remaining in my homeland nor a swift flight can bring any relief. But assuredly I am chastised by these tribulations, so that I learn to flee from the wrath to come.c “From them” I accept discipline, because the punishments of this world, which are either light and spare the soul, or heavy and cause death, a  William paraphrases the first part of the verse; ‘my more solid parts’ are ‘my bones’. b  Cf. Gregory the Great, Moral. 33, 12 (p. 1693). c  Cf. Luke 3, 7.

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are an indication of those to come, which operate weightily and for ever. I reflect on this before I die, because the impact of an ill that is foreseen is soft, and there is less force in a torment that has been thought about beforehand.’ Allegorically, we could say that God sent fire from above (that is, the Holy Spirit from heaven) into the bones of the church (meaning the apostles, for they keep her upright and strong), and that she was ‘taught’ by that because all the doctrine of the church proceeded from the Holy Spirit. Hence to the Spirit the words we sing are appropriate: ‘He taught them discipline and wisdom, He strengthened in them the grace of His Spirit, and filled their hearts with understanding.’a This interpretation could be aptly enough applied both to the letter prefixed and to the following text, were it not that what comes next caused us a problem: He hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me back, for of holy preachers, the feet of the faithful church, is written: Their feet were straight feet (Ezek. 1, 7), because they cannot be twisted backward to follow any iniquity, especially as the Lord says: No man putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God (Luke 9, 62), and the prophet: How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, and that preacheth peace (Isa. 52, 7). It is saferb then to follow through a simple explanation than to go on doing violence to the meaning, making it into a captive forced to do our will, and to say rather that these things are said of the lower members of the church,c which often slip and fall. For we want to avoid getting into a tangle from which we cannot extricate ourselves. We should think then of the fire of persecution said to have been hurled by the Lord from the clouds against the church, Cf. Ps. Gregory the Great, Respons. 782C. William rejects a possible interpretation, that the apostles had fire sent into them (which he feels to conflict with the following words about feet, i.e. preachers), in favour of the ‘easy’ one, where the reference is to the sending of fire on the ‘inferior members’ of the church. The rejected view is somewhat like that of Paschasius (1, 1299-1308). c  Her feet. There might seem to be some conflict with what is said above about preachers. a 

b 

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which had offended Him by the sins of some of her children. Hence in the canticle of Deuteronomy it says: A fire is kindled in my wrath, and shall burn even to the lowest hell: and shall devour the earth with her increase, and shall burn the foundations of the mountains (Deut. 32, 22). For in the early years of the church the carefree days of deep peace often bred negligence, and negligence bred contempt. God, angered by this and wrathful rather as men are, allowed the kindling against the church of persecution that would test the upright, burn away the wicked, and consume all that was earthly, proud, and destined for hell. Hence: As the furnace trieth the potter’s vessels, so the oven of affliction just men (Ecclus. 27, 6). And in Isaiah: I will turn my hand to thee, and I will clean purge away thy dross (Isa. 1, 25), meaning that the people of Jerusalem would suffer torments; for the dross cannot be separated from the pure silver without fire. We also read of the Lord in Malachi: He shall come forth like a refining fire: and he shall sit refining and cleansing the silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, so that after they are purified it may be said of them: And they shall offer sacrifices to the Lord in judgment and justice (Mal. 3, 2-3). This fire affected first of all the preachers of the church, who make her firm and erect; for the first to fall victim were all those who put the church on a stable foundation of doctrine. And thanks to the craftiness of the persecutors, once the shepherds had been slaughtered the flock could not stand firm, there being no one to fortify the faith or refute disbelief. In fact, however, the hopes of the wicked were proved empty, and had to give way. What ‘chastised’ the lower was the unflinching confession of the higher: the members unhesitatingly set themselves to follow an example that they saw their head had not rejected. It could be thought no light or trivial thing for which men outstanding in knowledge and powerful in eloquence had had the courage to be dyed crimson with the blood they shed. Nor was that all: even if people had already entertained the wicked thought of giving up the faith, they were brought back into line when they recalled the teaching of their shepherds. And this was, so to speak, a complex net to restrict the uncertain steps of the faithful—all too liable as they were to take the wide road to death—, keeping

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them to the narrow path of life, and turning back the minds of fools who were rejecting the faith. But as for those who were not hampered in this way,a and defected from the faith for a brief hour or for the whole of their lives, in them the church was ‘desolate, wasted with sorrow all the day long’. For though it is said to the just: Rejoice in the Lord always: again, I say, rejoice (Phil. 4, 4), and though the just rejoice in prosperity (as in The disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost (Acts 13, 52)) and in adversity (as in The disciples went from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproaches for the name of Jesus (Acts 5, 41)), the church could not help grieving to see her sons leaving her and going over to the wicked enemy. Wherefore those whom she had brought to birth in gladness, she searched for with grief when they were lost to her. But those who lapsed were also scorched by their own consciences—and there is no more destructive flame. For as the blessed Augustine very truly says in his Confessions, God has so arranged it that every disordered mind is a torment to itself; by its fears now, it anticipates the eternal punishments it will suffer in the future, if it does not repent.b I know I have said this elsewhere,c but it is not pointless to repeat myself, to refresh the reader’s memory. Morally, I understand the bones of the soul to be her better parts, those ruled by reason. These parts she raises towards heaven and strengthens in the good. I think these were the bones the psalmist meant when he said: Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak: heal me, O Lord, for all my bones are troubled. And my soul is troubled exceedingly (Ps. 6, 3-4). When the Lord sends fire from above into these bones, He is beyond doubt chastising the soul, whether you take it to be the fire of the Holy Spirit or the furnace of tribulations. For both of these fires either purge the soul altogether of the indulgences of vice, or at least make her come to a halt, warning her not to place her hopes in uncertain riches, not to love the transitory or neglect the eternal. Let her rather pona  i.e. those who did not allow themselves to be restricted by the ‘net’ that has just been described. b  Cf. Augustine, Conf. 1, 12, 19. c  See I, 2, 14 with n.

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der a late repentance for pleasures, which can often lead us to feel ashamed of having done what we burn to do on an unreflecting impulse. Let her think of how short a time remains, leaving so little room for the miseries piled up in it. However long a man may go on living, when he is dead it is as though he had never been. As with a play, so with life: what makes the difference is not its length, but how well it is acted out.a However sumptuous one’s life may be, one passes scarcely a day which is undefiled by the bitterness of some offence. Never let the eternity of the punishments to come leave your mind, so that the thought of them reins back what the licentious mind suggests. Any penalties in this world are, so to say, images of those to come. Do we then fear the appearance, yet fail to dread the reality? So, as I began to say,b the fire, whether of the Holy Spirit or of tribulation, chastises the mind’s reason with these thoughts; but, further, the net of the scriptures pulls back feet, that is her lower impulses, from the illicit. This is the net of the apostles, which in Peter and the rest the Lord turned to the fishing of men: not the net of which is said: Each man is fast bound with the ropes of his own sins (Prov. 5, 22), and in another place: The cords of the wicked have encompassed me (Ps. 118, 61), but rather that in: The lines are fallen unto me in goodly places (Ps. 15, 6). This net is woven with many strands of sentencesc designed to catch our souls for their salvation, so that however much a man may turn a blind eye or haver, he falls into something that will twist him back to what his conscience dictates. I could provide many instances of this word, but it is obvious how strong that divine net is, whether it uses the words of the scriptures to counter vice, or besets sinners with the hidden judgement of God. Would that I might be taken in these toils, to drive me away from my pleasures! Would that the Lord might say to me: I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and I will hedge them with a wall, so that thou dost not overtaked thy lovers (Hos. 2, 6-7). The prudent Cf. Seneca, Epist. 77, 20. I, 13, 9. c  From the Bible. d  See I, 5, 11 n. a 

b 

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and amenable soul falls willingly into these snares; but she does not meanwhile take a holiday from the grieving that mention of her previous wickedness thrusts upon her. But she is as it were desolate, wasted with sorrow all the day long. For she cannot be free of care, thanks to the accumulation of her earlier sins and her imminent departure from the body. After being shipwrecked, the first plank you clutch is to grieve for what you have done, and to punish your own misdeeds. You did not play the leading role, that of Wisdom; take then the minor part, Modesty. That you sinned was a sign of folly and shamelessness; may you have the self-respect and good sense to repent. 1, 14. Nun. The yoke of my iniquities hath watched; they are folded together in his hand, and put upon my neck; my strength is weakened within me; the Lord hath delivered me into a hand out of which I am not able to rise. This letter means ‘eternal’, which gives no sense; so it demands the aid of the letter following, which means ‘help’.a For indeed it does help eternal life if a man, in accordance with the purport of these verses, pre-empts punishment by paying in the present for what he has done wrong in the present. Hence the Lord says: If any man shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea (Matt. 18, 6). He intimates by these words that for a sinner his torment is temporal, but his gain is eternal good. For why should it be ‘better’ to suffer evil things here if it is of no profit for the future? Therefore we must praise the mercy of our God, which by using harsh remedies wins souls that would otherwise perish. But it is pious to think this only of those who repent: for those who out of despair or obstinacy repress confession of their sins deep within their consciences, temporal punishment is not the remission of sins but the beginning of misery.

a 

Cf. I, 15, 2 (samech).

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It must also be borne in mind that unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it.a Did the people of Jerusalem skimp in placing men to guard their city? What of the wisdom of the great men, expending all that the exercising of their minds could contribute?b What of the toils of the watchmen, denying their eyes sleep, and wearing away the battlements with their breasts? They thought that by their watchfulness they would escape hazards, avoid dangers: all in vain, for they lacked the grace of God, all in vain while their haughty contempt towards God persisted. The only way to free themselves would have been to give up their vices. But—if I may put it this way—God’s equity and men’s iniquity were in competition; they did not cease to sin, He allowed nothing to go unpunished. They went on with their crimes, making a bundle of them, for God to fold together and put upon the neck of the wretched at the time of retribution. But that these things are said metaphorically is understood by anyone who is aware that this figure, like the other rhetorical precepts which are sold at such a price by masters of secular knowledge, are regularly to be found in Holy Scripture. And so the city was naturally weakened in the person of her inhabitants; by putting her trust in riches and fortifications she had scorned the help of God. For cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and whose heart departeth from the Lord (Jer. 17, 5). At such a man will be aimed the pithy saying that Rabshakeh, minion of the king of the Assyrians, hurled at Hezekiah king of Judah: Lo thou trusteth upon this broken staff of a reed, upon Egypt: upon which if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it (Isa. 36. 6). A man without power deceives if he promises help to another. If you are shipwrecked yourself, how can you guarantee a happy voyage to another? It would be too little for man’s hope to be of no avail: it has to be shown to harm as well. It harms because it leads to nothing useful. It harms because it shuts inside this world a man’s gaping greed, which has shut him off from God. God allowed a city in this state to fall into the hands of the enemy, a  b 

Cf. Ps. 126, 1. Conjectural reconstruction of a corrupt sentence.

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so that, in a manner familiar to mortal kind, she might, seeing her hopes brought to naught, learn humility and unlearn pride. She would therefore cry to the Lord and gasp for His help. While she trusted in herself, she could not but fall; now she would realise she was in no way able to rise again—by herself. In the allegorical sense, these verses do not suit the church as a whole; but when understood of individuals in the church they do not altogether clash. For the iniquitous wickedness of some in the church so batters at heaven’s door that God in His severity cannot forget them. I am speaking in human terms. God, so clement by nature, would assuredly wish to avoid punishing sinners; but they as it were wake Him from His sleep, and goad Him on when He is reluctant to act. Wherefore He fixes wakeful eyes on them, and inflicts sore wounds. Nor are they slow to amass a ball of sins until it lengthens and hardens into a yoke,a which, when put on their necks, breaks their knotted stubbornness and throws them to the ground. Behaviour like this makes God’s people subject to pagan nations, under the yoke of miserable slavery. Behaviour like this weakens armed peoples and overthrows fortified cities. It made the Jews, once beloved of God, no match in war first for the Babylonians, then for the Macedonians, and finally for the Romans: clients in subservience, captives in defeat, tributaries in money. A just outcome! They had been ungrateful for God’s clemency; now for their pride they were whisked away at the whim of their conquerors. Behaviour like this has often made Christian armies yield to Gentiles, so that more than 200 years agob the Turks and Saracens took control of the places that had known God’s birth and Passion. Look how few of usc are left as the result of such behaviour—though once we were a race, if not large numerically, at least The image is of a ball of yarn, which becomes a rope (cf. Isa. 5, 18), then a yoke. What particular crisis in the East William is thinking of is still to be discovered. Jerusalem was taken by the Arabs in 638, by the Turks in 1073. c  William refers with unusual bitterness to the plight of the English after the Norman Conquest. There is a striking parallel with the wording of Wulfstan’s remarks about the Normans in the ‘new’ page of GP (see 42, 6β6-7). I discuss the two passages in J.M.L. 11 (2001), 50-59; 20 (2010), 70-77. a 

b 

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superior to many in learning and courtesy. Surely in us is seen to be fulfilled what the psalmist said in stigmatising the Jews : Scatter them by thy power; and destroy them, O Lord, my protector (Ps. 58, 12). Thus some of us were brought downa and lost their worldly glory, some were turned out and sigh for their sweet homeland, some have died and taken consciousness of their misery away with them. But as for those of us who remain, let us put up with evil fortune, until triumphant felicity puts an end to our troubles. Let us not therefore look at what we suffer, or at whose hands: rather at why. It would certainly be a consolation in our distresses if we could see in our oppressors some distinction in learning, some holiness of character, some excellence of lineage superior to our own. Solace in calamity would be provided by the worth of those inflicting calamities. For we could tell ourselves that they are wiser than we, that they display right judgement when they reproach us for our mistakes. But in fact they are themselves of low birth, base in character, and quite without literary knowledge. Who then would tolerate this?—though we should remember an incident in the life of the blessed David: when the son of Gerab abused him, and Abishai, a tried and tested soldier,c burned to avenge his lord, David stopped the furious man in his tracks with the reply: Let him alone and let him curse: for the Lord hath bid him curse (2 Kgs. 16, 10). In saying this, one who had surpassed the glory of all his predecessors surpassed himself also. Hence Solomon’s dictum: Better is the patient man than the presumptuous: and he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh cities (Prov. 16, 32). So this instance helps us to preserve patience, because the Lord’s is all our life, the Lord’s is all we suffer. Hence our most glorious athlete, when he entered upon the scene of his contest, said: The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the Lord so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1, 21). a  Suggesting that William wrote not destrue (‘destroy’) in the quotation from Psalms, but the usual dispone: ‘bring them down’ (Douai). b  Shimei. c  Or did William think of him as a knight? Cf. also III, 29-30, 3.

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But since we are concerned with the unworthinessa of persecutors, let us remember that what we are suffering is not new. It is the way of the world and virtually a law of nature that the wicked ride roughshod over the wretched. If they were good, they would not act thus. But God, finding a good use for their badness, employs them to chastise those He loves, because a father generally throws into the fire the stick he beats his son with, once the boy has been corrected. Let us remember that the Babylonians were no better than the Jews, worse in fact, because while the Jews served one God, if only in a shadowy way, the Babylonians openly worshipped their absurd idols, and went so far as to claim for themselves the right to be God’s agent in the punishment of the Jews. Yet they conquered them and led them away: even their liberty went into exile. God showed by this that He was concerned not to weigh the merits of those who inflicted punishment, but to punish the sinner. He showed too that He would rather have a few good worshippers than many bad ones. He also wished to rouse the restb to give up in this world the hopes they had entertained in vain, and allow God’s grace to embrace them: grace easy to attain if you long for it, and not liable to slip from your hands if you hold fast to it. For often, indeed almost always, men in the straits of illness or punishment cry to God then in particular, though previously they had forgotten Him out of negligence or even blasphemed against Him out of arrogance. The world is full of relevant examples; so I will return from personal grief to my general exposition in relation to the church. As I have often said,c when the church sees the faith undermined by heretics or her faithful distressed by pagans, or her morals corrupted by her own catholic members, she cries out: My a  i.e. their not being ‘worthy’ to cause such suffering; cf. § 7: ‘Solace in calamity would be provided by the worth of those inflicting calamities.’ Cf. I, 10, 3 ‘the worthlessness (uilitas) of the culprit’, III, 43-45, 3 ‘the unworthiness (indignitas) of their enemies’, and to some extent IV, 1, 2 ‘the unworthiness (indignitas) of the people misusing them’. b  It would be possible to retain the transmitted reliquarum and supply nationum or gentium, ‘other peoples’. c  William refers rather inexactly to I, 7, 7 (demons, heretics, bad catholics) and I, 10, 5 (demons, heretics, Gentiles).

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strength is weakened within me. For ‘within her’ the strength of the church is weakened and collapses, though through God it increases and advances. Hence the apostle said: For what hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it? (1 Cor. 4, 7). And the Lord Himself: Without me you can do nothing (John 15, 5). Nor did He make some slight exception; rather, He said that absolutely nothing can be done without Him, thus making all arrogance impossible and abasing all boldness. A Christian’s first care, then, must be to preserve the modesty of a humble conscience. If he transgresses its bounds, he will be delivered by God’s just judgement into a hand out of which he will not be able to rise. For by his own vice he can fall into error, but by his own strength he cannot escape from the nets once he has become entangled. By his own vice he can provoke the scourge of God, but by his own strength he cannot repel it. By his own vice he can go downhill into wantonness, but by his own strength he cannot shake off evil habits. Morally, the yoke of which the prophet speaks is the one mentioned in another passage of scripture: A heavy yoke is upon the children of Adam, from the day of their coming out of their mother’s womb, until the day of their return into the mother of all (Ecclus. 40, 1). The soul troubled by sins complains that she is oppressed by this yoke, and cannot breathe freely: My iniquities are gone over my head: and as a heavy burden are become heavy upon me (Ps. 37, 5). In this yoke she ensnares herself, when by misusing her free will she strays from what her Maker enjoined on her. But naturally the yoke of her iniquities watches in the hand of the Lord; they reprove her even though she acts of her own volition,a and set before thy face.b So it is well said in the same prophet: I shall watch over the iniquity of my people.c The severity of God is therefore to hand, and does not allow to go unpunished wickednesses which the soul William seems to be saying that, though sin is that which constrains the soul, yet the soul still retains free will in sinning. But etiam (‘even’) appears uncalled for. b  Cf. Ps. 49, 21. One commentator take the psalmist to mean: ‘I will place you in front of yourself so that you can see your foulness and be ashamed’ (Ps. Bede, In Ps. 49, col. 746C). c  The passage and the prophet have yet to be identified. a 

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does not remember but believes to have vanished. He watchfully blocks all her efforts, and turns into bitterness any sweet thing she may have devised. Her pleasures themselves die down with time, and start to cause disgust—how true it is that no pleasure is so agreeable that it does not grow worthless with repetition! So God folds iniquities and puts them on the neck of the soul, in this world so that she suffers pain, in hell so that she burns. However reluctant she is here, however much she tries to plunge herself into worldly pleasures, she cannot escape conscience, which she carries around with her. She may beg for future aid from on high, she may appeal to the saints: she cannot enjoy the fruitful penitence that she has scorned here. Her strength therefore is weakened within her, for, deprived of God’s strength, she is delivered into a hand out of which she is not able to rise. Why she cannot, I have often explaineda—but it bears repetition: what must always be borne in mind must be frequently stated in writing. The usefulness of this topic moves the tongue, and warns the soul to take care not to fall under the yoke from which she cannot extricate herself when she wants to. She may try to give up her vices—and find she cannot. She may raise herself a little—and fall back. If she does something good, she may stain it by boasting. Dire and pitiable is this yoke with which the hand of the enemy oppresses her, openly blocking or secretly decrying the good in her. But once freed of her body she is handed over to torturers whose barbarity is not diminished by reason or softened by time. She could not escape them even if she could (as they say) take to her wings and fly away, or turn herself into every monstrous shape like Proteus in myth. No end can be expected for torments in a place where no arts can arouse pity. Where there is no defendant convicted of crime, there will be no judge, hostile because of the deserts of the sinner, no executioner, steeped in savagery by nature.b e.g. I, 1, 7 and 8. The point seems to be that in hell there are no legal forms. The sinner is not given a trial, so he cannot plead for mercy; he has no judge (however hostile) to appeal to, no executioner (however cruel) to put an end to his sufferings. a 

b 

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1, 15. Samech. The Lord hath taken away all my mighty men out of the midst of me; he hath called against me the time to destroy my chosen men. The Lord hath trodden the winepress for the virgin, the daughter of Juda.a One in extreme grief thinks that his complaints can never go on long enough. The nub of the matter he can express briefly. But, measuring others by himself, he uses variation to give the same material a new twist, and frees himself at least by his verbiage,b letting out in this manner what is eating his mind away within and making it itch sorely. That is why what this lamenting , which has been talking for some time,c not content with the advocacy that the prophet had given her in his words, now returns to much the same ideas in her own person. He had bewailed the captivity of the great men: she repeats his lament. He had recorded the calamities suffered by priests; she does not fail to mention them either. ‘The Lord,’ she says, ‘did not pick off individuals gradually, but “hath taken away all my mighty men” at one fell swoop, excellent men and of high spirit, through whom I used to be magnified. So there were removed “out of the midst” those thanks to whose intercession I feared no adversity and could look forward to every kind of prosperity. The breeze of peace that seemed to be favouring me, the calm weather that seemed to be lending itself to my prayers, turned around. The enemy’s cruelty was not restricted to the deaths of common people, did not stop at the slaughter of the mob: it had also to overwhelm, blot out and destroy all the most elect, the very priests of God, under the ruins. Nor did the most merciful Avenger do these things to exact everlasting punishment, but’ (in accordance with the meaning of This seems to be the punctuation assumed by William; see below, I, 15, 11 (I, 2444). b  This seems to mean: Judging the emotions of others by his own, the griever imagines that by such repetitiousness, as well as unburdening himself, he will attract the sympathy of others. c  Since part way through verse 11. William proceeds to refer back to verses 4 (priests) and 6 (princes). a 

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the letter samech (‘help’) that prefaces these verses) ‘sent them as a warning of everlasting ills. It is a sign of an ordered world, of excellent progress towards the good, if when a man suffers temporal disadvantage he has comfort to hope for in the future.a God therefore inflicted on me many kinds of tribulation, so that in their winepress He might reject the lees of sins and strain out the pure natural liquid, and so that after this every Jewish soul, displaying a virgin’s chastity and modesty, might be unconscious of any stain, unaware of any corruption.’ Allegorically, the mighty men are taken away from the church when her excellent priests are snatched away by a tornado of persecution or drowned in a whirlpool of luxury. Her mighty men are those who by their efforts, and with the grace of God, make her mighty to the ends of the earth. They act as her intermediaries when they impress God’s precepts on the church by their preaching, and bring back her requests to God by their prayers. But when, as often happens, so many men of this calibre are swallowed up in the quagmire of sin, they are taken away out of the midst of the bosom of the church. They were, too, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that they might be holy and unspotted in God’s sight in charity.b Yet there seems to be imminent, and all but upon us, the time of which the Lord says: For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, in such a way that (if possible) even the elect are led into error (Matt. 24, 24). For long ago, in the early days of the church, when there was no discord between peace and faith, there were chosen men in the church who stood apart from the behaviour of the common man; their bodies dwelt on earth, but their spirits in heaven. But now all piety has degenerated into profit, and new practices have taken over. Men’s minds are set on other concerns, and only the arts of avarice are cultivated. Priests once used, in time of persecution, to press salutary sermons on their flocks, thinking that their own power The argument is a little elliptical. God’s plan was to punish the Jews, and so purify them that they could have hope of heavenly reward. b  Cf. Eph. 1, 4. a 

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and immortality were being furthered by this means. The chosen therefore abounded, each man glowing with virtues, and thinking it redounded to his glory if he was first to take the prize of a martyr’s death by provoking the persecutor. Latterly, the slackness of peace and the abundance of goods have harmed the virtues. Joy consists only in the possession of wealth, and nothing ornaments a bishop as much as his income. Everyone’s prayers concern profit, and the virtues have gone to the dogs, the ordinary man being ashamed to surpass his priests in good qualities. How then can we avoid the thought that dangerous times are not far off, of which the Lord says: There shall be then great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be. And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened? (Matt. 24, 21-22). So those tribulations are meant by the words that follow here: The Lord hath trodden the winepress for the virgin, the daughter of Juda. Assuredly, just as difficulties in this life destroy the wicked, so they test the elect. For many are the afflictions of the just; and out of them all will the Lord deliver them (Ps. 33, 20). As in a press the sweetness of the wine is strained out to be laid up in the family store, while the useless pips are thrown away, so by tribulations the good man is made better and escapes to a freer sky, while the bad man is made worse and sinks more heavily into the filth of vices. Of good men Peter says: If now you must be for a little time made sorrowful in divers temptations: that the trial of your faith be more precious than gold which is tried by the fire (1 Pet. 1, 6-7), and Paul: Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God (Acts 14, 21). But of the wicked: He that is filthy, let him be filthy still (Rev. 22, 11), and again: The Ethiopian will not change his skin (Jer. 13, 23). If the just man falls, he rises to grace after a brief warning; the unjust becomes positively hardened to punishment. It is the sign of a foolish and malevolent mind neither to respond to kindnesses nor to be broken by adversity. A well-bred horse is controlled by the shadow of a rod; the low-bred cannot be urged on even by the spur. As for ‘winepress’, we can understand it in Holy Writ of the testing by tribulations that makes the just

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shine forth and the unjust grow pale. The eighth Psalm, entitled For the presses (Ps. 8, 1), supports what I say. This psalm, following the destruction of the enemy and the defender (that is, the ending of the violence of persecutors), exalts the church to the skies, praising her out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings (Ps. 8, 3) (we understand by these the apostles, who are alluded to in this way because of their innocence and their thirst for learning); it adds other things relevant to this sentiment, showing to what glory the church rocketed as a result of her tribulations—and equally how much faithlessness declined. For one who preaches the praise of a martyr surely hints at the misery of the persecutor. I remember I have oftena said that, when ‘the mighty’ and ‘the chosen’ and ‘princes’ come up in these lamentations, they can in the moral sense stand for the natural ‘affections’ of the soul, which ‘affect’ her according to casesb and circumstances. It is no wonder if the words for the duties and conditions by which men differ from each other are attached to the soul, considering that she even takes on the names of beasts where there is a likeness of behaviour. For example, it is appropriate enough that a man who obeys the orders of demons, and is swept into disgraceful actions at their pleasure, is named after beasts of burden. Hence: Their issue is as the issue of horses, and their flesh as the flesh of asses (Ezek. 23, 20), and elsewhere: Do not become like the horse and the mule, who have no understanding (Ps. 31, 9). If a man falls into sin, and does not just neglect to take flight, but even finds himself a pleasant place to hide his guilt, not fearing to corrupt others by his disagreeablec stink, he comes close to resembling all beasts of burden. Hence: The beasts have rotted in their dung (Joel 1, 17). If he tries with great effort to raise himself up, but then slips back again, and grows a  Only I, 1, 5 (I, 50-52) seems at all relevant. It may well be that what William remembers is talking in such a way when addressing his brothers orally. So too at I, 19, 11 (‘I have often said’). Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 8 makes a similar suggestion, but the passages he cites there in n. 27 (I, 301 and 2082) should be otherwise explained. b  Or ‘causes’. c  For this unusual sense of ignauus cf. I, 2486 ‘ignauum olet’. See TLL s.vv. ignauus 281, 60-63; ignauia 278, 1-2.

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used to his sins again, he is living the life of a pig or a dog. So: The dog is returned to his vomit: and, The sow that was washed in the mire (2 Pet. 2, 22). If then a soul borrows names that are alien to her nature, they will be assigned appropriately from something neighbouring.a Her ‘mighty men’, therefore, are proud and arrogant thoughts; because of them, she regards those subjected to her as beneath her dignity, and misuses the good things that have been freely granted her. She does not respect the nature they have in common, but judges by fortune. If fortune has smiled on a man, she favours him the more lavishly; if it has not, she humbles him the more insolently. But God takes these ‘mighty men’ away from her on the day of which it is written: In that day all their thoughts shall perish (Ps. 145, 4), and also: That day is a day of wrath, a day of tribulation and distress, a day of calamity and misery, a day great and very bitter, a day of darkness and obscurity, a day of cloud and terror, a day of the trumpet and alarm. The strong b man shall there meet with tribulation (Zeph. 1, 14-16). How great (I ask you) must be the violence of that day, which the eloquence of the prophets found difficult to portray as it deserves? Their rhetoric circles the subject with a great array of words, yet fails in the attempt, because no mortal will be able to say what that day will really be like. On that day mighty and (as someone said) foot-long wordsc will cease, and so too will arrogant deeds. On that day sophisms, the pomp of honour, and the boast of noble blood will count for nothing. On that day distinctions will be made only on merit: lord and servant, rich and poor, noble and base, will be judged in an equal balance. That will be the time when even the ‘chosen men’ are ‘destroyed’, for, however holy, however elect a soul may be, she realises that her merits, when she looks upon them, are far beneath the holiness of God. Hence Job: The heavens are not pure in his sight, and in his angels he found wickedness (Job 15, 15 + 4, 18). Angels and archa  For the limits to the element of likeness (similitudo) in metaphor see Lausberg, § 558. b  Douai has ‘mighty’. c  Horace, Ars poet. 97

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angels shall tremble, but where shall the ungodly appear?a So the Lord destroys the ‘chosen’ of the soul, because even if she knows she has some good in her, she will not stand before that dreadful judgement-seat without qualms. Further, the Lord will tread the winepress for the virgin, the daughter of Judah, that is, the soul, which is a virgin by baptism (as the psalmist says: Preserve my soul, for I am holy (Ps. 85, 2)) and a daughter of the church who confesses Christ in correctness of belief. The winepress will be what the apostle in another passage calls the fire that tests: Other foundation no man can lay, but that which is laid; which is Christ Jesus. If any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble: every man’s work shall be manifest; for the day of the Lord shall declare it, because it shall be revealed in fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work, of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work burn, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire (1 Cor. 3, 11-15). Here we are to understand that those who do good works, which are signified by gold, silver and precious stones, will straightway be granted an eternal reward. But those who have committed many, though slight, sins without being repentant here, will be melted down by the fire that purifies, so that at the last they may become worthy of reward on high. This winepress the Lord will tread for all the race of men when He ‘shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left’, to the former solemnly proclaiming lasting joy, to the latter threatening punishment of perpetual fire.b But, Almighty God, let my prayer be directed to you, that you may in this life shake me in the press of tribulations, roast me in the furnace, and lead me thus refined to the storehouses in which the happy soul rejoices when she says: The king hath brought me into his storerooms (S. of S. 1, 3). ‘His storerooms’ are the mysteries of the city on high. The chosen search for them here in hope; there they contemplate them in reality.

a  b 

The second clause resembles 1 Pet. 4, 18. Cf. Matt. 25, 33 and 46.

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1, 16. Ain. Therefore do I weep, and my eyes run down with water: the comforter, the turner of my soul, is far from me. My children are desolate, because the enemy hath prevailed. This letter, which means ‘fount’ or ‘eye’, has to be joined on to the two following,a ‘of mouth’ and ‘of justice’, to give ‘fount of speech’, ‘eye of justice’. think of her sins with pain, and avow them with tears.b The lamenting city sticks to her complaint, and, as I said earlier,c whatever the prophet said about her, she repeats a second time. He had said: Weeping she hath wept in the night, and her tears are on her jaws (Lam. 1, 2). She repeats this: Therefore do I weep, and my eyes run down with water. In this way the grieving soul, going over her miseries again, renews by her plaints what had grown old with the passage of time. She finds relief in tears, and if she comes across a sympathetic listener she dissipatesd the ferment of her internal pain by complaining of it. She crucifies herself to pleasures, renounces what formerly seemed worthy of desire. Everything that in the past used to appeal to the nose with its sweet fragrance now smells disagreeable; even condiments ruin the flavour of the food, where once they used to tempt. What of everything else? The very light is loathsome to her; she takes flight from the sky itself, regarding it as her enemy. Hence, day and night, she gives herself to study, so that the inmost recesses of her eye run down with rivers of tears. Indeed thesee are bittersweet; they please, but they do not conduce to health; they are loved, but they bring sickliness. It would be a remedy against calamity if friends were present to turn sorrow into joy. But when they are not there, in pursuit of fortune with rivalling malignity,f Phe and sade. The exact wording of the required supplement is uncertain. Nor is it clear how ‘think of ’ and ‘avow’ pick up the ‘connection’ just established. c  I, 15, 1. d  Literally ‘digests’; see I, 1, 8 n., and compare the use of euaporare at I, 143 and 1793. e  i.e. (solitary) tears. f  These false friends are following fortune, not friendship (see I, 2, 3), and (apparently) turning out to be competitors rather than supporters in distress. a 

b 

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or because they are not available for some reason, then indeed, as though the steersman is asleep, the cloud of grief gathers, a storm of tears is whipped up. Then is the soul made aware of the violence of the Enemy and her own weakness. Then the two of thema fight it out, each in turn claiming the soul for its own. Thunderstruck by her ills, she is dumbfounded, with no idea which to give way to, and, swept away by different emotions, ‘is tossed now hither, now thither’.b In the allegorical sense the church weeps when (as I have often said)c most of her people do not behave as their Mother would wish, or positively grieve her by their lack of faith. This is the weeping with which the eyes of the church run down, the eyes concerning which the Bride is addressed in the Song of Songs: Thy eyes are doves’ eyes, which sit beside the plentiful streams (S. of S. 1, 14 = 4, 1 + 5, 12). For the eyes of doves, though not shameless in desiring what belongs to others, are not unwary in self-defence. For, as we are told by those who have taken the trouble to discuss the nature of animals, doves sit by river banks in order to get away quickly and avoid attack from predators, which they sense are flying high in the sky from the shadows that penetrate the water and create an illusion. In the same way, holy preachers of the church elucidate with subtlety and perspicacity the deeps of the scriptures, on whose surface float savours that give health to the soul.d There,e in whatever way the shadowy rapacity of the Devil may try to slip into the minds of the faithful, preachers by taking thought can themselves flee swiftly and by their example instruct their hearers to beware. That birdsf are figures of the Devil and his minions is made clear by the Lord’s parable on the sower and the seed. After saying that some seed fell by the way side, and it was trodden down, a  The passage is in part corrupt. But the ‘two of them’ seem to be the Devil and the soul’s weakness. b  Cf. Vergil, Aen. 10, 680. c  Cf. e.g. I, 13, 8. d  For this difficult passage, compare II, 11, 3 (II, 848-852), and see the textual discussion in CC CM 244, pp. 322-323. e  i.e. (apparently) in the Bible; preachers can counteract any mistaken interpretations by their deeper knowledge. f  i.e. raptors (not doves).

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7.

and the fowls of the air devoured it (Luke 8, 5), He then threw the light of exposition on this dark saying: They by the way side are they that hear; then the devil cometh, and taketh the word out of their heart (Luke 8, 12). It is reasonable then that the eyes of the church run down with tears, because everyone who harms his mother weeps the more freely the keener his intelligence.a To be sure, in the past there were long periods when persecutions rained upon the church, and it seemed (if such a thing were possible) that the Lord had altogether disregarded her. That explains the groaning voice of one gasping out anxious complaints: Why, O Lord, hast thou retired afar off? why dost thou slight us in our wants, in the time of trouble? (Ps. 10, 1 Hebr.). So too here: The comforter, the turner of my soul, is far from me. This is said …b The terrible punishments inflicted upon the Christians and the slowness of any help had an enormous effect in influencing the Gentiles to withhold belief, for they were people who had buried their hopes deep in the delights of the world, and thought it sheer folly to scorn present and die in agony. They therefore asserted that Christ had little or no power to intercede with those in heaven, who (they reckoned) thrust down His worshippers to the nether regions, their slaughtered bodies heaped high. As a result, it was not merely that souls with no faith were not ‘turned’: even souls long faithful re-turned and swallowed the vomit of faithlessness.c The Devil prevailed, and, even though their holy mother church had weaned them and shaped them into men outstanding for every kind of righteousness, many of her sons departed. So she wept for them the more inconsolably because so much effort and expense had been wasted on them. What cost a great deal does not disappear without a pang. The loss of something that cost nothing matters little.d Cf. I, 2, 10. The general sense of the words omitted in the translation may be: ‘This is not intended as literal truth, but to those of poor judgement it bears the appearance of truth’. But the exact wording is quite uncertain. c  Cf. Prov. 26, 11. d  Much easier would be ‘quod gratis acquiritur’: ‘what is acquired for nothing is little regarded’ (Sønnesyn). a 

b 

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In the moral sense, too, there is weeping on the part of every sinner who repents of some serious fault and follows up his guilt with tears. Bitter liquid flows then from his eyes, so that years of weeping may wipe away the stain caused by some superficial pleasure, gone in a moment. But it should not be enough for the penitent to weep for the evil he did: he must also sigh for the good he does not possess. That is why there is brought in here a soul weeping in particular because she has no comforter, that is, the Spirit, the Paraclete,a to turn her when she has faced away, and stop her facing away once she has been turned. In truth, the Holy Spirit hates an obscene dwelling, a heart which shudders at itself, a mind that punishes itself. Hence it is said: The Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from the deceitful, and will withdraw himself from thoughts that are without understanding (Wisd. 1, 5). Wherefore David, who had heaped upon adultery the crime of homicide,b and so knew that he had provoked God and lost the spirit of the divine Trinity, says: Renew a right spirit within my bowels (Ps. 50, 12), and again: And take not thy holy spirit from me (Ps. 50, 13), and a third time: Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and strengthen me with a ruling spirit (Ps. 50, 14). Here we should understand by the ‘ruling’c spirit the Father, by the right spirit the Son, by the holy spirit the Paraclete, whom we often call by that name. switched these words around unusually,d in order to show the truth of the saying ‘In the Trinity there is nothing earlier or later, nothing greater or smaller.’e Well, once this spiritf has been expelled, the bowels are invaded by hideous ghostlike spirits. For when the virtues have been shown the door, the virtues that by nature the soul should have built up to her own profit and the glory of God, such spirits invade Cf. John 14, 26. Cf. 2 Kgs. 11, 2-17. c  The Latin word is principalis. d  By giving the order Son, Holy Spirit, Father rather than the customary Father, Son and Holy Spirit. e  Caesarius of Arles, Serm. 3 (p. 21). f  The ensuing mention of ‘bowels’ suggests that the spirit meant is the ‘right’ one, Christ. a 

b 

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I, 16 (8.) – I, 17 (2.)

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2.

places they should not enter, and take possession of the mind from the dispossessed heir.a When virtue prevails, the Enemy collapses; when the Enemy gets up again, virtue is overthrown. It is indeed a matter for shame and misery if we cede our rights to that most foul spirit. He relies not on his own strength but on our sloth, not on his own wiles but on our connivance. He yields if we apply pressure, he prevails if we stint our effort. How absurd if he were to use us as supporters to further his design to destroy us! So by God’s grace it is in our hands whom we choose as our patron: God for grace, him for death; God for homeland, him for exile. No, let him rather ‘go to hell’,b and live in the sombre darkness below the earth, while we with God’s help defend our bright abode. 1, 17. Phe. Sion hath spread forth her hands, there is none to comfort her. The Lord hath sent against Jacob his enemies round about him.c Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them. For a short time the original method has been changed; now the previous course is resumed.d The speaker is the prophet, who shows and as it were points out with his finger the gestures made by the grieving: now stretching out joined hands, now twining and twisting them, now turning them up and spreading them out. These are the signs that show when grief within is darting out, and clamouring for the favour of bystanders, should they have any tender feelings, any pity and clemency. In fact the wrath of God had so erupted over Sion that the city seemed to deserve no solace, yet to be pitiable—the only kind of remedy remaining to the wretched when all others are despaired of. Where indeed could she look for consolation? To trust in divine assistance? But it was hardly appropriate for an undeserving city to have confidence in Him whom she had enraged. To the Cf. Lucan 7, 824. William appropriates a classical imprecation (cf. e.g. Terence, Andr. 317). c  This is the punctuation implied in I, 17, 7 (I, 2650-2651): note ‘quos … mandare dicitur’ (‘whom he is said to send’). Douai translates ‘The Lord hath commanded against Jacob, his enemies are round about him’. d  i.e. we return from speech by Jerusalem to speech by the prophet: see above, 1, 15, 1 (I, 2316-2318). a 

b 

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prospect of eternal life after torments here? But the Jews are intent only on profit in this life and look no further, except that they dreama that they will reign with their Christ for a thousand years at the end of the world. To hope that brighter fortune will soon return? But the scale of the evils they were now suffering had left them no reason to envisage better times; indeed the prophet Jeremiah extended to seventy years the period after which they might hope for an end to their slavery and the recovery of their liberty.b To her own people? But they had been killed.c To neighbours? But they were hostile. Compare the next words: The Lord hath sent against Jacob his enemies round about him. This intimates that it was not foreign to God’s purpose that the neighbouring nations, who had long harried Jerusalem, were happy for the chance to go on the offensive and satisfy with insatiable greed the hunger for slaughter they had harboured for so long. All whom fortune put in their way were consigned to death. These savages were not hindered by reverence for the aged, pity for children, or the weakness of women. They did not want any of the Jewish stock to survive: all their memories of that nation smelt rotten in their nostrils and made them shudder disagreeably, just like the waste blood of which women during their monthly periods are said to be relieved. The Jews are sufficiently acquainted with misery: it has made them a mockery to other nations in almost every age. Some criticise them for their stupidity and their sabbath holidays, because they allow a seventh of their whole lives to go by in inaction,d a reproof which Josephus tells us was levelled against them by one Ovidius Satabacis.e Some, like Lucan, attack them for an unNote the present tense. See I, 12, 3 n. c  A topos familiar from the Medea of Euripides onwards; in Latin cf. e.g. Gaius Gracchus, cited in Cicero, De orat. 3, 214; Cicero, Mur. 88-89. The link with William has yet to be traced. d  Cf. also I, 7, 4. As there, it is not clear if William means to speak of the general futility of Judaism, with the sabbath as one instance, or merges the two together. But what follows here suggests the latter; so we should think of deleting et, ‘the stupidity of their sabbaths’. e  Cf. Ps. Rufinus, Ios. Ant. 12, 1 (Ouidius Abatareides). a 

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I, 17 (2.-6.)

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known and vain manner of worship;a others fasten on circumcision, like Juvenal, who calls them the ‘de-foreskinned’.b Nowadays too—not to mention Christians, whose discord with them is known the world over—they are taunted even by the Saracens, to whom they are related by religious custom and indirectly by lineage. They abuse anyone they mark off as faithless and perverse with the words ‘He is a Jew’. I myself have heard this from a man who would be ashamed to tell a lie. Allegorically, what the ‘hands’ of the church are is shown by the church herself in the Song of Songs: My hands dropped with myrrh (S. of S. 5, 5). To understand this saying, you should pay attention to words spoken just before. When the Bridegroom had figuratively encouraged her to preach, she for a while said it was too difficult; finally she gave her consent, and added: I arose up to open to my beloved (S. of S. 5, 5). This is immediately followed by My hands dropped with myrrh, as if she were saying openly: I did indeed arise to feel a longing for preaching, that I might open the hearts of the infidels to my Beloved. But since for its hearers preaching is best commended by the good works and continent life of the preacher, I was not negligent in this either. For a ‘hand’, a doer of works, means, quite properly, the ‘works’ done by it, and ‘myrrh’ means continence, which chastens and restricts the humours of the body as they flow out, to stop them coming forth to produce a stain. So the church spreads out these hands when she preaches urgently to the unbelieving, but equally does not let her life fall below the standard of her preaching. Yet according to the example in the Gospels,c where those invited parry the kindness of him who invites them, pleading worldly business or harmful curiosity or even carnal pleasure, few or none give aid to the church by behaving obediently, for all her cries. Hence Isaiah, speaking in the role either of God or of the church, says: I have spread my hands all the day to a people that believeth not, but contradicteth me (Isa. 65, 2 + Rom. 10, 21). These people did not think that their Cf. Lucan 2, 592-3 (cited above, I, 3, 3). In fact Martial 7, 30, 5. c  Luke 14, 18-20. See further I, 19, 6. a 

b 

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malice went far enough if they failed to mount from wickedness to what is right: they had to attack the good most bitterly too. Next comes: The Lord hath sent against Jacob his enemies round about him. The Lord is said to send them because, though in Himself remaining quiet and unmoved, He allows them to have their way in everything, while His church is tossed by every kind of storm. It should be noted that those are ‘round about’ who bring most affliction to the church: heretics and bad catholics. For as for the Gentiles, their barbarity often either slackens thanks to the faith of Christian princes, or else, as the flame of anger loses its force, grows tired and dies back on itself: it is ashamed to waste its powers to no effect, and to swim against the stream,a since the more the church is oppressed, the more she grows and strains on towards victory. Yet persecutionb either by ill-living catholics or ill-believing heretics is never lacking; they sprout like the cut-off heads of the hydra, and are constantly replaced to carry on their wicked practices. Their attacks, covert but the more harmful for that, weaken the Mother, both by the wounds they inflict and by the loss resulting from the rejection of the love she offers. Bad catholics combine to war against the ‘supplanter’ of vices (which is what ‘Jacob’ means),c though on the surface they profess love for Jerusalem, that is, the peace of the church.d As for heretics, they establish new dogmas, while mocking the old ecclesiastical doctrines as if they were blots offending eye and ear alike, though in fact they are completely pure and shine brilliantly. Such frightful scorn is figured by the discharge from women, brought forth by the regular monthly cycle; nothing, doctorse say, is more noxious to the touch or disgusting to the smell.

Cf. Juvenal 4, 89-90. See n. on I, 8, 4. i.e. harassment of the church. c  Cf. Gen. 27, 36. d  Jerusalem being interpreted as ‘the vision of peace’ (Isidore, Etym. 8, 1, 6). e  Perhaps an early use of this sense of the word phisicus; phisica is used of doctoring in GR 2 prol. 1. Alternatively, William may just be referring to Pliny the Elder, Nat. 7, 64. a 

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7.

8.

I, 17 (6.-11.)

9.

10.

11.

Bad catholics, too, though according to the propheta they honour the church with their lips, yet their heart is far from her, for they plead the excuse of harsh precepts or unreliable promises. Disdainful lethargy like this characterised those who, on hearing the words of the Lord, said: This saying is hard, and who can hear it? (John 6, 61). Unhappy indeed were those who were nauseated by the victuals of heavenly life, and who had blocked up the nostrils of their mind to prevent the smell of them, that brought salvation, from entering deep inside them! Wide scope is open to the moral interpretation of these words, for a faithful man who had turned after sinning says to God: I stretched forth my hands to thee: my soul is as earth without water unto thee (Ps. 142, 6), and again: In the day of my trouble I sought God, with my hands lifted up to him in the night, and I was not deceived (Ps. 76, 3). The soul stretches forth her hands to God day and night when, in adversity and prosperity alike, she opens up the wounds of her misdeeds to Him who hung for us on the tree, the Doctor, the Medicine, and when she says, like the psalmist: I said I will confess against myself my injustice to the Lord: and thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my sin (Ps. 31, 5). She stretches them out to her neighbour when she allows instances of her good actions to be bruited abroad, though without allowing her sense of purpose to be taken captive by the desire for praise, in accordance with the Lord’s saying: So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matt. 5, 16). In saying this, He did not try to discourage the public doing of good actions to the advantage of others; rather, He ruled out the flattery of empty praise. But amidst this the soul lacks solace because, although she is penitent in the sight of God and does good works in the sight of men, she is nevertheless always nagged by the bite of conscience. If she is even a very little elated at the good she does, up run at once all her misdeeds done at a dangerous age or by chance inadvertence. As she never feels completely free from these worries, she is never fully comforted either. And these are the enemies whom the Lord in His mercy and grace summons against a 

Cf. Isa. 29, 13.

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her, so that if ever she gets above herself, so as to swell up, she is at once, by mention of these misdeeds, brought down below herself, so as to be afraid. How wonderful and praiseworthy the crafta of Christ, who checks sins by means of sins, and reins back misdeeds by means of misdeeds! If pride in some good act wells up, images of remembered sins present themselves, to stop you sinning and becoming haughty. So they invade the mind ‘round about’, to its benefit, for it reckons that if its good and bad deeds were weighed in a true balance, the bad would plunge right down, the good would fly up through the empty air. That is why, as sacred history testifies, the Lord did not fully cut to pieces the nations opposed to Israel, but left far more intact, in order (as He says) to try Israel by them (Judg. 2, 22; 3, 4). For it is a fact that if you suspect attack from the foe, you are kindled to bravery: your mind does not grow slothful through inactivity, or relax into luxury from sheer lack of concern. When the soul finds herself amid these enemies, she feels herself to be not bright with meritorious deeds but polluted ‘as a menstruous woman’, saying with the prophet Isaiah: All your justices as the rag of a menstruous woman (Isa. 64, 6). But the kind lord Jesus is the scent of blessing, the scent of life, surpassing pure balsam, by His fragrance dissipating what before seemed infected by the stench within us. He is the fountain from which are drawn rivers of virtues that water the garden of delights,b and wash away all that seemed foul. Of this is said through the samec prophet: The house of David shall be a fountain open to the inhabitants of Jerusalem: for the washing of the sinner, and of the unclean woman (Zech. 13, 1). This fountain was concealed while it lay hidden in the bosom of the Father, but open when it issued for our salvation from the stock of David. Take especially careful note of the words ‘is open to the inhabitants of Jerusalem’; for it cleanses from their small but frequent shortcomings those who fix their So too (of God) at I, 5, 12. The phrase is first found in Quodvultdeus, Temp. barb. 2, 5, 4 (of Africa); see also Isidore, Etym. 14, 3, 2 (of Paradise). c  Not so. The reference is to Zechariah. a 

b 

142

12.

13.

I, 17 (11.) – I, 18 (2.)

1.

2.

gaze keenly on the vision of eternal life.a It also washes sinners, even those weighed down by bad habit, represented, I think, by the menstruous woman, who does not willingly flow with blood, but cannot escape this unavoidable function. Let us run then to this fountain shedding tears, let us wash ourselves in the fountain of pity. It is open universally to individuals, and individually to all. The examples of the saints encourage us not to despair of the forgiveness of sins. 1, 18. Sade. The Lord is just, for sheb hath provoked his mouth to wrath. Hear, I pray you, all ye people, and see my sorrow: my virgins and my young men are gone into captivity. The prophet reproaches the sinful city: it was justly (he says) that she paid the penalty, for she hath provoked the mouth of the Lord to wrath. By ‘the mouth of the Lord’ is meant those of whom it is said: It is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you (Matt. 10, 20). Hence Isaiah frequently saysc Woe to you that have done this or that, for instance have not asked at the mouth of the Lord (Isa. 30, 2), doubtless meaning the prophets. If in the present passage I understand ‘the mouth of the Lord’ to mean prophets, I am perhaps not mistaken, for they eagerly drank down the spirit that flowed into them by divine inspiration, and habitually spoke words that would benefit the citizens of God. But those who had grown hardened in the evil of their crimes not merely showed no concern for the prophets’ words: they went so far as to punish these heralds of God with grievous abuse and sometimes even death. The prophets, being only human, were provoked, and cursed their persecutors, concerned (as I am inclined to believe) not to abuse but to prophesy. One of them said: Add thou iniquity upon their iniquity: and let them not come into thy justice. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; and with William bases his interpretation of the passage from Zechariah on the meaning of the name Jerusalem, ‘the vision of eternal peace’ (above, I, 17, 8 n.). b  William takes the subject to be the city of Jerusalem (see below). c  The mention of Isaiah’s frequent uae qui formula (e.g. 5, 8) is not relevant here, except in so far as it is in this one passage applied to a phrase that includes the words os Domini. a 

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the just let them not be written (Ps. 68, 28-29). Our Jeremiah, too, who had been plunged in mire by them and had his neck weighed down with heavy chains,a invokes on them the fall of the city, and on women wombs without offspring, and in general on everybody a sword that knew not how to spare. But the prophet is going too far, and the lamenting city blocks his way; she interrupts his accusation and takes over with complaint.b ‘This is a time for complaining,’ she says, ‘not accusing. Unwelcome is the comforter who in a time of calamity burdens a sinner with words, and assails him with accusations. Enough and more than enough I shall pay the penalty, and compensate for my brief pleasures with long-drawn-out punishments. If I had had any sense, it would not have been worth my while to be so wanton. But (to adapt Solomon) if then was the time of joy, let now be the time of sorrow.c Wherefore, I pray, attend all ye people, and see my sorrow: all ye people, I say, who marvelled at my opulence and took me as a model of religious observance. My misery surpasses the woes of all other cities, which in their ignorance of the true worship have only their own fortunes to bewail, making light of the loss of illusionsd of whose falsity they had been well aware. But my offence is exacerbated by my scorning the truth, which suffers the more because I am accused of having believed in vain.e While in this way going beyond the pattern of suffering, I have not es-

Cf. Jer. 38, 6. William, reading prouocauit (‘hath provoked’) in the lemma, attributes ‘Iustus est …’ to the prophet (cf. above ‘propheta increpat’). The city starts to speak again only at audite. c  Cf. Eccles. 3, 4 and context (taken to be the work of Solomon). d  simulacra should perhaps be taken concretely of the images of pagan gods. William thinks that a city which lost these lost nothing, for they had never really believed in them. Dr Sønnesyn compares Hildebert of Lavardin, Carm. 38 Scott (starting ‘Dum simulacra…’). For William’s knowledge of the poet, see Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 71-72. e  Rather than ‘shown to have believed in vain’. William seems to be saying, rather confusedly, that Jerusalem had a) unlike pagan cities, believed in the (true) religion whose outward symbols she has lost; b) scorned the truth; and c) made that truth suffer in the eyes of others who regarded her fall as proof that the God of the Jews could not protect his own. a 

b 

144

3.

4.

I, 18 (2.-6.)

5.

6.

caped ordinary tribulations either.a For “my virgins and my young men”, in the flower of their youth and with a beauty that even barbarians might pity were they not bestial too, were forced to leave their homeland while the smoke was still rising , and after being bereft of their parents endured the most grievousb captivity. This was the harder to bear because they were unused to such treatment. Experience hardens the old in suffering: they put up stoically with what they have often seen. But young people are broken by what they are not used to, though in the end, as they grow older, they too become hard and resolute.’ This passage calls no less for an allegorical exposition: it is through the tribulations of the church that the judgement of God’s justice advances. Whether the bad are being punished or the chosen tested, just judgement is weighed out equally in every case. But it is pious for men in trouble to feel—and very common for them to say—that what they are experiencing is payment for their sins rather than a reflection of the extent of their merits.c That is why we have here: The Lord is just, for she hath provoked his mouth to wrath. Doubtless this refers to provocation by a particular churchman. For never have human affairs been in so hopeless a plight that the entire church offended (or is offending) God at the same time. But Holy Writ delights in the figure that consists in putting part for whole or whole for part,d because, as the apostle also testifies, if one member suffer any thing, all the members suffer with it (1 Cor. 12, 26). Now the ‘mouth of the Lord’ is the same as His Word, the Lord Jesus. For just as in the Gospel Jesus Himself wishes to be Again obscurely phrased. ‘doloris exemplum supergressa’ (‘going beyond the pattern of suffering’) picks up ‘superat … erumnas’ (‘surpasses the woes’). Jerusalem suffers both the special pain analysed in the previous lines, and at the same time the ‘common’ tribulations of the defeated (described in what follows). b  Cf. ‘suprema calamitas’ (‘the worst disaster’) at I, 2, 4. William perhaps means ‘to cap it all’. c  That is (though the point is not made clearly) it is pious to think that one’s sufferings are the punishment for being wicked (picking up ‘whether the bad are being punished’), not a testing of one’s goodness (picking up ‘or the chosen tested’). One should think of oneself as one of the wicked, not one of the elect. d  See I, 2, 11 n. a 

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understood to be both the door and the janitor,a because He Himself opens to those who are willing to believe, and because through Him one enters into the faith, so the Father utters the Word that brings salvation to men, and through Him imparts His will to them.b When Christians scorn His words and force Him for all His clemency into punishing them, He is said to have been stirred to anger. Great then is the pain, huge the loss, when we make the Lord of the heavens, Judge of the earth, find time to torment us, when He would far rather find time to reward us. It is only right then that all peoples should attend to the church’s sorrow, for the holy Mother would wish to snatch them to her bosom, if only they were not so stubborn as to spurn her counsel of salvation. Let them therefore hear with all attention how great is the sorrow that shatters her inmost parts when the Old Enemy captures her young men and her virgins, and drags them under his sway. The ‘virgins’ are those who possess complete sanctity, to such a degree that not even in secret do they prostitute to pleasure or enslave to wrongdoing the chastity of their thoughts; while the ‘young men’ are those who, in all their strength and with all the heat of youth,c do not hesitate to join battle with the Devil and overthrow him with the knotted muscles of their virtues.d But when the Enemy, after being defeated (as had been hoped), takes up his spirit of malice again, and attacks and overthrows such heroes, so great a setback is greeted by loud and continued complaints among the remaining churchmen. The degree of joy they felt when their champions stood upright creates and supplies the material for the sorrow they feel when they fall. So far as the moral interpretation is concerned, this sentence does not need to be explained. Its exposition is too familiar to Cf. John 10, 3, 7 and 9. The Father ‘speaks’ the Word that became incarnate in Jesus Christ. The parallel with Christ as door and doorkeeper seems inexact. c  Cf. III, 25-28, 8 ‘primeuus calor’, ‘the first heat of youth’; cf. GR 284, 3 ‘primum calorem iuuentutis’, ‘the warmth of early manhood’ (also 389, 1), GP 95, 6 ‘aetatis calore preferuidus’, ‘in his hot youth’. d  Cf. VW 1, 4, 2 (the Devil wrestles with Wulfstan) ‘duris ulnarum internodiis corpus … astringens’, ‘pinioning his body in his sinewy arms’. In our passage the virtues are identified with the knotted muscles of the young men. a 

b 

146

7.

8.

I, 18 (6.-10.)

9.

10.

need me to publicise it—but not so cheerful that it is pleasant to repeat it constantly. But how wretched it is to be unable to deny something which it is shameful in the extreme to confess! Yet this many people, and we especially, brothers, can say, in great bitterness of heart: The Lord is just, for shea hath provoked his mouth to wrath. In another place too: Every thing that thou hast done to us, Lord, thou hast done in true judgment, for we have sinned against thee and have not obeyed thy commands. We have sinned, we have committed iniquity: we have departed from thee, and trespassed in all things: and we have not hearkened to thy commandments, nor have we observed nor done as thou hadst commanded us, that it might go well with us. Therefore thou hast delivered us into the hands of those that are unjust, and most wicked, and prevaricators (Dan. 3, 29-32). Absolutely justly, Lord, altogether justly, for we have scorned you when you favoured us and mocked you when you threatened us. Wherefore, if it is proper to say so, not knowing how to deal with us, you left us to be the prey of Fortune. It will be right to apply to us the words of the blessed Cyprian:b ‘When one of our colleagues and fellow-priests was wearied by illness and anxious about the approach of death, he asked to be released.c As he prayed, and was on the point of death, there stood by him a young man, of pre-eminent distinction and majesty. He was tall in stature and brilliant in appearance. A man could scarce gaze at him with mortal eyes as he stood by him: only one about to leave the world could look on such a being. He roared, with a certain indignation showing in his voice: “You are afraid to suffer. You do not wish to go forth. What am I to do with you?”’ This can suitably be said to us by God, for we have resisted His favours and not given in to His scourge. Let heaven and earth then weep for us, for we are turning the wheel of misery.d Let everyone attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to our sorrow.e If we had anything pure and holy in us, it The subject, for the moral interpretation, would be the individual soul. Mortal. 19. c  i.e. he requested the viaticum. Cf. VW 1, 15, 3. d  Cf. Vergil, Aen. 6, 748. e  Cf. Lam. 1, 12.

a 

b 

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has long since given way to pleasures. If we had any perfect constancy, it has long since been defeated and has surrendered to the Enemy. Our lot then is much more pitiable than that of the captive Israelites. They were led captive, but unwillingly: they went to foreign lands out of necessity, and chose to come back again.a They carried their homeland with them in their hearts, and looked for a means to return. But we have been glad to obey an unjust victor, we have whole-heartedly gone under his sway. But let us return at long last to Him who invites us back. He will take us back when we turn around, He who calls us back when we face away. Apart from anything else, who would not wonder at the remarkable indication of mercy found in the prophet Hosea? What shall I do to thee, O Ephraim? what shall I do to thee, O Juda? (Hos. 6, 4); and below: How shall I make thee as Adama, and set thee as Seboim? (Hos. 11, 8). For all His wrath, He keeps His sentence in the balance, and, feeling as a father feels, is at a loss to know how He is to hand the delinquent over to punishment. Even if a sinner deserves it, God still goes on weighing the question. (Seboim and Adamab were cities in the neighbourhood of Sodom, and shared a like ruin.) For what follows? He says: My heart is turned within me equally,c my repentance is stirred up. I will not execute the fierceness of my wrath: I will not return to destroy Ephraim (Hos. 11, 8-9). Is it not obvious that Jesus is wrathful with us in order to turn us around by frightening us? His wrath then is not the execution of retribution but the working out of absolution. In short, what He meant was: Only if you turn and sigh will you be saved. He desires our groans, but only for a time, so that He may spare us groans that last for ever. He gazes upon our tears, so that He may pour out His pity. He gazes upon our penitence, so that He may once again grant His grace, which would have continued in us if no failing had crept up on us. But because we go on incurring offence by our sins, and grow ever more proud, He is wrathful that we may be humbled. Let us then be humbled under This occasion is described, less flatteringly to the Jews, in III, 22-24, 2. Admah and Zeboim in the Authorised Version. c  The Greek means rather ‘at once’. a 

b 

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12.

I, 18 (10.) – I, 19 (3.)

1.

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3.

the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt us in the time of tribulation.a 1, 19. Coph. I called for my friends, and they deceived me; my priests and my ancients pined away in the city, for they sought their food to relieve their souls. I have, I remember, often saidb what I am now going to say again—and I know that nature herself backs up its truth. However great the weight lying on a mind in distress, the sweet solace of friends either much diminishes it or altogether drives it away. Whatever laments you pour into the bosom of one who loves you helps to disperse the cloud of gloom, and the more complaining the less sorrow. Nature has given mortals no greater joy than to be joined by ties of friendship.c Knowing this, our lamenting city called on her friends for help at a time when the enemy was already upon her, when she already saw her walls surrounded by booming weapons. The burden of her prayer was either to repel the foe with martial aid, or to join in and help to mitigate the crisis that faced them all. Any danger is endured more readily, and repelled more swiftly, if it is shared: each individual, in accordance with his character, contributes a long-suffering temperament or advice for the common cause. But ‘they deceived me’, either because they feared the Babylonians, or out of a feeling of ill will, deep-rooted and almost inborn, that makes men spurn someone in trouble whom they once cultivated in prosperity. What is more, they did not openly plead as excuses the evil hour and the difficulty of giving help. On the contrary, they used craft to deceive: they misled the credulity of a friendly city by using fair words. As a result, they held her up from seeking help elsewhere, while not themselves giving any at all. So, left all alone, and furious at the thought of her old nobility, she had to use the barrier of her walls to defend her freedom a  Cf. 1 Pet. 5, 6. The Vulgate has uisitationis. The reference in any case must be to the last judgement. b  Cf. I, 9, 4; I, 12, 2. c  Rather than ‘joined to friends in (fellow-)feeling’.

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against the Babylonians. Pale faminea raged within, consuming the people in droves, particularly those who balked at stealing from others, conscious as they were of their age and status. For some able-bodied men, mad with hunger, demanded a bite of food from others, leaping at the very throats of the starving. Wherever they scented some delicacy, they were on the spot in a trice, starvation guiding them to the spot. Such predators could meet with no resistance from people whose flesh scarcely clung to their bones:b you might see what looked like bodies, but you would not see them functioning. This madness the priests and ancients chose not to indulge. As I said, age and position had made them mature of character and able to put up with hunger. And so they ‘pined away’ wretchedly. This was a great grief to the city: those in particular were being wiped out who should have shored her up in her downfall, some by prophecy, others by council. Of course, the letter coph, which means ‘calling’, has to be joined to the following letter res, ‘of the head’, to give the sense: You called your friends, and they deceived you. Return then to your head,c who calls you of His own accord for all your disobedience, and will free you from all dangers. It is better to return to the merciful Lord than to endure the grim looks of false friends. But the friends of the church are those of whom the Bridegroom speaks to her in the Song of Songs: Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the friends hearken: make me hear thy voice (S. of S. 8, 13). And also, addressing them: Drink, friends, and be inebriated, my dearly beloved (S. of S. 5, 1). They are doubtless the rulers of the church, whose preaching Christ wishes to hear, and whom He urges to gulp down the sacraments of the scriptures, so that, being sharp-sighted and lively in regard to them, they may be made dull and stupid towards the allurements of the world. These men are called by the church when she says through Wisdom in Proverbs: O ye men, to you I call, and my voice is to the doors of men (Prov. 8, 4). But because there are many rulers of the church, deeply versed Cf. Vergil, Aen. 3, 217-8. Cf. Vergil, Ecl. 3, 102. c  i.e. Christ (cf. I, 20, 5). a 

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4.

5.

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in the scriptures, who yet undermine and deny by their works what they preach in the pulpit, not much latera come the words: You have despised all my counsel, and have neglected all my correction (Prov. 1, 25), and further on: I also will laugh in your destruction, and will mock when sudden calamity shall fall on you (Prov. 1, 26-27). Justifiably then we read here and they deceived me, because the hope of holy mother church, by which, according to the apostle,b she stretches herself forth to the things that are before, is not a little forsaken in themc because she is failed by her teachers, and made to slip backwards.d This deception the Lord nicely indicates in the parable I mentioned earlier,e where He tells how three men unwilling to come to His banquet found three different reasons to excuse themselves. The first said he could not come because he had bought a farm; this stands for all worldly ambition. The second tried to avoid the host’s wrath on the plea that he had to try five yoke of oxen; this means curiosity, which wars against the soul in the shape of the five bodily senses. The third was prevented from coming by his recent marriage and the tie of matrimony; this signifies all the temptations of the flesh. These three things the blessed evangelist John appears to prohibit in his letter: Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the world,f or the concupiscence of the eyes, or the concupiscence of the flesh (1 John 2, 15-16), meaning by the concupiscence of the world all secular ambition; by the concupiscence of the eyes curiosity, which reigns (as I have said) in all the senses but especially in the eyes; and by the concupiscence of the flesh the hazards of lust, flowing clothes, luxurious food.

In fact much earlier. Cf. Phil. 3, 13. c  i.e. in the things that are ahead. d  Cf. Vergil, Georg. 1, 200. e  Cf. I, 17, 6 (Luke 14, 18-20). f  William gives an eccentric version of the passage. It is hard to avoid repetition in the English (the Latin has first mundo, then seculi). a 

b 

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Friends like this deceive the church when she calls them, to such an extent that almost everything that is holy or morala in her fails for want of preaching. For no degree of rank, no sanctity of years can fail to totter when the preacher avoids preaching—or voidsb his preaching by his works. Hence it is that many, dwelling in the faith as in a strong city,c breathe out their sweet souls for lack of the sustenance of heavenly food. The soul too has deceitful friends, whose agreeable tongues flatter the sinner. The result is that he sins more freely and recklessly, as he not merely escapes reproof, but receives praise. Hence in the Psalm we have: The sinner is praised in the desires of his soul: and the unjust man is blessed (Ps. 9, 24 = 10, 3 Hebr.). He accordingly goes gradually to the bad. He completes cheerfully what he had begun timidly, and is bold in its defence, as is written: They are glad when they have done evil, and rejoice in most wicked things (Prov. 2, 14). What is more, he is not embarrassed to proclaim abroad some shameful action, and mendaciously pretends to have done what he did not do, for fear that in the eyes of the wicked he may seem more worthless and despicable the more chaste and the more innocent he really is. Hence the prophet: They have proclaimed abroad their sin as Sodom (Isa. 3, 9). Meanwhile he feeds on false praise, his every word and deed, however wicked, being met with applause. Madness remarkable indeed (for the apostle says: No one knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him (1 Cor. 2, 11), and this is confirmed by experience) to believe another’s tongue rather than one’s own conscience! To be so crazy as not to know one’s own mind, but to seize on another’s vapourings to apply to oneself! I should not myself have believed someone could be so foolish, had not a philosopher said: ‘Trust not men’s view of you, but your own’.d Surely it is a grievous deception of the soul not to rest content with one’s own judgement about oneself, but to listen to empty words bandied about a  Literally, ‘mature’, ‘grown up’ in their behaviour. Cf. I, 19, 3 ‘maturitatem operum’, ‘maturity in how they acted’. b  The Latin plays on cessante/cassante. c  Cf. e.g. 2 Chr. 21, 3. d  Dicta Catonis 1, 14, 2 (tr. after J. D. Duff). See also I, 9, 8.

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by the tongue of another. Accordingly, the Lord says through the prophet: O my people, they that call thee blessed, the same deceive thee (Isa. 3, 12). These friends the soul, straitened and beset by terror on the body’s last day, consults as to the merits of her life—but finds them deceitful and mendacious. It is then, when the gloss of flattery is removed, when the applause of others is silent, that the ever-increasing punishments correspond to the truth told by the conscience. Consonant with this sentiment is the parable in the Gospel, where the foolish virgins say to the wise: Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out (Matt. 25, 8), as though to say: Because you see us turned away as if we had no good work to show, say what you have seen of us. At once comes back the sarcastic reply: Go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves (Matt. 25, 9). Go (they mean) to those who, longing for your custom, will sell you clouds of flattery, so that you may shine with their ointments rather than with the judgement of Him who watches within. Therefore when the soul is beleaguered at the majestic judgement-seat where God presides in His severity, as though shut in behind the walls of some city under enemy siege, any good act that suggests itself will count for little or nothing. For if a man has done something that might be thought ‘worthy of the status of priesthood’ or ‘appropriate to the ripeness of wiser counsel’, all this will, I repeat, do little to relieve his soul, but will instead pine away before God’s terrifying tribunal. But the food of the soul is the relief provided by God’s pity. This rests on an analogy from the body.a Thus, to soothe the dryness of his tongue, the soul of the rich man asks for a drop of water,b though in fact the spirit has no tongue and does not feel thirst or hunger. But, as I have often said,c while we are weighed

a  Lit. ‘the example of the name having been drawn from bodily things’, an odd locution. As William goes on to explain, the incorporeal can only be expressed via the corporeal.  b  Cf. Luke 16, 24. c  The only parallel I know is in William’s Miracula (see CC CM 244, p. 332).

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down by the body that surrounds us, we cannot know or express incorporeal things without using corporeal sounds.a 1, 20. Res. Behold, O Lord, forb I am in distress: my bowels are troubled, my heart is turned within me, for I am full of bitterness. Abroad the sword destroyeth, and at home there is death alike. says: ‘I return to you, Lord God Omnipotent, as if to my homeland after a long journey of lament, for you are my only and perfect comforter. You alone know how to give perfect solace, for you know every remedy for the saving of all men. Therefore, I beg, may those eyes of mercy be turned on me that the frowardness of my errors has so long twisted away. May your mercy overcome my misery, for it is proper that the power of the creator should surpass the weakness of the creature. Have mercy on Jerusalem, the city which thou has sanctified, the city of thy rest (Ecclus. 36, 15). Behold, and consider, for I am in distress. Let your eyes be not merely cast in my direction, but fixed upon me too. In your mercy you can see perfectly; such sight is the grace and relief of human misery. If you completely behold me, all that is unruly will calm down, all that is harmful will be put to flight. ‘Now is there need for aid, for help on a large scale, that I may rise in all my parts after I fell in each. The rich citizens, into whose laps used to flow the meagre fortunes of the people around and on whom riches used to be heaped, have in my ruin lost all they owned, just as troubled bowels discharge with pitiable looseness all that had been stuffed into them. Equally, the wise and sensible,c who presided like a heart over the body of the city, were at a total loss what to advise: a great disaster overturns the intellect, fear makes a wide-ranging mind narrower. There was no hope left: the better classes were wasting away with hunger in my midst, or were disgracing themselves by going over to the enemy. Everyone was distraught, as at the onset of a tempest, when a  i.e. words properly associated with the body. Cf. III, 1-3, 3 (III, 54-56) (where uocabula is used). b  William may well have taken quoniam to mean ‘that’ (so too below, where he adds et considera, ‘and consider’). c  There is a play on cordati and cordis.

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“the skipper abandons the helm and leaps down into the sea: each man makes shipwreck for himself”.a Thus, drained of citizens, I am full of bitterness. It caps my miseries that the wretches who longed to escape death by surrendering voluntarily or being forcibly taken prisoner found their hopes were empty: the swords of the foreigners disposed of them. Cruel death was brusque with the compliant, who stayed inside the walls and did not balk at exposing themselves to famine, but equally with the stubborn, who employed every device to avoid it.’ As well as the historical explanation, which I have given in the city’s own words, an allegorical sense can be elicited as follows: The church is in distress when her bowels are troubled and when her heart is turned within her. Of the bowels she herself says in the Song of Songs: My beloved put his hand through the key hole, and my bowels were moved at his touch (S. of S. 5, 4). By the hand of the beloved is signified the power of the only-begotten God, of which He says at another point: My hand stretched forth the heavens (Isa. 45, 12). When even a slight chinkb of understanding displays this hand to the church, her fragile members quake. For the perfect understand Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, as the apostle witnesses,c while the weak recognise the same Jesus, ‘and crucified’.d In the same way, eyes, however feeble, can gaze at the sun on a cloudy day if they are persistent, while eyes however clear avoid and fear that same Lucan 1, 501 and 503; tr. J. D. Duff. The image is of someone looking through a narrow crack (corresponding to the foramen in the Song of Songs). Cf. also III, 1285. c  Cf. 1 Cor. 2, 5-7 (partly cited at IV, 4, 2). Add II, 19, 4 and esp. III, 25-28, 9: ‘perfecto … et erudito uiro’, ‘a perfect and learned man’. William is in these passages thinking of those who have deeper understanding of Christian truths because they have been ‘perfected’ by education and monastic training (compare Reg. Ben. 6 ‘perfectis discipulis’, ‘perfect monks’; also 73 ‘ad perfectionem conuersationis qui festinat, sunt doctrinae sanctorum patrum, quarum obseruatio perducat hominem ad celsitudinem perfectionis’, ‘for anyone in a hurry to attain the perfect way of life, there are the teachings of the holy Fathers to lead to the heights of perfection a man who observes them’. Similarly at III, 16-18, 8 the ‘perfectae religionis anima’, ‘the soul perfect in religion’, needs to study the word of God. See generally ODML s.v. perficere 9c. For ‘perfect’ in a wider sense see e.g. III, 1-3, 4. d  Cf. 1 Cor. 2, 2. a 

b 

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sun when it launches the spears of its rays. Of the heart, Christ in His own person speaks in the psalm which He, while on the altar of the Cross, consecrated with a mystic melody:a All my bones are scattered. My heart is become like wax melting (Ps. 21, 15). He meant by ‘heart’ the same people as He did by ‘bones’, the apostles, who, though stronger in the faith than others, were terrified by the appalling scene of the Passion, and scattered each where he could,b looking for safety in the speed of their feet. They had deserved to be granted His deep love, and had shared His counsels. But they melted in the scorching fire of that same Passion, and failed, almost to the point of denying their faith. (This melting was the result of human fear. But there is another caused by God’s love, of which the Bride says: My soul melted when beloved spoke (S. of S. 5, 6)). It does not seem to be illogical if what was said of the heart of Christ, who is the head of the church, should be said of the heart of the body itself.c So all is clear: by ‘bowels’ are signified the weak citizens of the church, by ‘heart’ the spirited and strong. While they, because of a lapse in faith or a life of self-indulgence, trouble the church, any discipline she had is upset, any religion she had is turned within her. Thus she is filled with bitterness, for she has been deserted both by uprightness of character and by correct belief. You should not think this a feeble or lame complaint; the certainty of the matter is shown by the redoubling of the idea in: Abroad the sword destroyeth, and at home there is death alike. ‘Abroad’ is the mob, slothful in knowledge, but Christian in faith, which cannot—and does not care to—penetrate the inner sanctum of Holy Scripture. Sloth results in ignorance: but these are interconnected, and the two vices are linked by hooks that do great harm. (It is my opinion that the apostle was thinking of such people when he laid down that one who is to be thought worthy of the episcopate should ‘have a tesa  Apparently meaning that these words are to be understood allegorically of the circumstances of the Passion. b  Cf. Mark 16, 8. c  i.e. the church itself. If Christ’s heart can be ‘melted’, the church’s heart can be ‘turned’.

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timony’: having a good testimony of them who are without (1 Tim. 3, 7). He cannot be talking of the Gentiles, whose testimony is a disgrace to a Christian, not a distinction. So he says elsewhere: If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ (Gal. 1, 10). Also: What part hath the faithful with the unbeliever? And what link hath Christ with Belial? (2 Cor. 6, 15).) ‘At home’ dwell those who are the patrons of the house of God, and settle church business. To them is said: You are fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2, 19-20). Therefore abroad the sword destroyeth when all the ignorant and naive fall victim to pitiable moral corruption and to destruction caused by the Devil’s violence. ‘At home there is death alike’ when people and priest are on the same level. If this could ever have been true, why not now?—for when, to use a poet’s words, did cash, ‘when did dicing have such a hold?’a When did priests flaunt such pride in secular eminence? Further, one speaks of the death of the soul when the most depraved behaviour is widespread, when a spirit gone astray and devoid of wisdom makes use of the world for shameless purposes, in such a way as to die to God. But if you prefer to connect these words with heathen persecution, ‘abroad the sword destroyeth, and at home there is death alike’ will fit well with the apostle’s words: Combats without, fears within (2 Cor. 7, 5). ‘Without’ there were combats of martyrs, fighting against their insane enemies in order to buy, at the cost of temporal death, joys that would last for ever, while the fears ‘within’ were those of the rulers of the church, anxious lest the rest, having gained peace, might lose their right mind, and become disaffected from the good as faithlessness slowly spread, or slip into evil as luxury tickled them. That God should turn away from her the foul misery and miserable foulness of them all is the devout prayer of the church; she hopes for help from Him who healeth the broken of heart, and bindeth up their bruises (Ps. 146, 3). A similar prayer is required by the misery of the soul: encompassed by the distresses that cannot but be present in this world, a 

Juvenal 1, 88-89.

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she must cry to God: Behold, O Lord, for I am in distress. There are indeed many distresses in this world, many miseries. Who could be equal to thinking about them, let alone listing them? This was known to the speaker of the words: The life of man upon earth is a warfare (or, according to the old translation, a temptation) (Job 7, 1). What does ‘warring man’ hope to achieve by such labours and (so to speak) a thousand deaths? To be the king’s friend, doubtless. And in such a position what is not fragile and full of peril? And through how many perils does one arrive at the greater peril!a And when will that be? Before then, maybe, he will bleed his life away or gasp it out in illness. But if it does some day happen, he will find it all too easy to lose what he attained with such difficulty. Similarly,b all the toil of men attains its goal by incurring great danger: reward comes slowly, loss swiftly. Is not the mind tempted by almost everything that has life, everything that has flavour, everything that can be felt? If pleasant sounds attract the ears, if alluring tastes indulge the palate: behold, temptation! If enticing scents gratify the nose, if charming bodies seduce the touch, there is danger of backsliding. Finally the light we see, queen of the heavens, which we long to enjoy and hate to be without, brings almost as many temptations as the colours it reveals. While undergoing such a round of error, the soul is already being punished for her sin: she is (unless God pities her) getting in advance a taste of the punishments awaiting her in hell. Therefore because these travails are beyond numbering,c the prophet seems to me to have summed up all the calamities of man—all the wicked actions that result from a defect in nature or a grave lapse of attentiond—in a brief motto: My bowels are troubled, my heart is turned within me.

The danger run by a man who eventually attains high office. William moves on from the physical dangers besetting a man involved in public life to the spiritual dangers besetting any soul. c  Picking up ‘Who could be equal to thinking about them, let alone listing them?’ in § 8. d  This mysterious pair seems to contrast natural (and so involuntary) wrongdoing and intentional sin. a 

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These miseries are endured by both body and soul, as is showna by the words: Abroad the sword destroyeth, and at home there is death alike. By the ‘bowels’, which along secret natural passages distribute food appropriately to all parts of the body, may be signified the ‘natural action’, which comes into visible effect from the hidden recesses of nature. The ‘heart’, by which thoughts are organised, stands for the rational movements of the mind. But the ‘natural action’ b is disturbed when, as a result of discord in the harmony of the four humours, the body wastes away and fails. The soul’s reason is ‘turned’ when she devotes herself to the frivolities of this world rather than the commandments of God. For what is more foreign to reason than that she, disobeying the laws of the giver of reason, becomes like irrational beasts? Man (it is written) when he was in honour did not understand; he is compared to senseless beasts, and is become like to them (Ps. 48, 13 = 21). This would not have happened if the soul had maintained the ‘rational numbers’ of which she was made up. But as she neglected them she deserves to incur the following: Abroad the sword destroyeth, and at home there is death alike. Abroad, a train of diseases invades the body and gradually consumes it, in the end destroying it with the sword of death. In the soul’s private recesses too, spiritual death rides arrogantly; unless by the grace of God she takes care, it will overthrow her with the pitiful destruction that awaits sinners. It is no wonder then that the soul is full of bitterness: she is a captive sojourner in a captive lodging-house;c an exile corrupted by luxury, she groans at her wretchedness far from home. There are some joys in this present life, but they assuredly grow bitter when the thought of future penalties plies its goad. Wherefore let her cry from the depths of her heart, from her deepest bowels, cry a  Abroad covers the body, at home the soul. The twin operation on both is worked out in what follows. b  This phrase occurs in John the Scot, Periphys. 2 (pp. 78, 1826 and 1831­1832). ‘Rational numbers’ below also sounds like John’s language. c  Both she and the body surrounding her are ‘captives’. One might think that the soul is ‘grasped’ (complectatur) by the body rather than the other way round, but Dr Sønnesyn suggests that ‘the image plays on the tension between the neoplatonist notions of the body both as the receptacle and as the effect of the soul’.

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to God from this vale of tears,a and say: Behold, O Lord, for I am in distress. Perhaps He may hear, perhaps He may take pity and absolve so many errors, and by His grace carry aloft to glory her whom He thrust down to be punished as she deserved. 1, 21. Sin. They have heard that I sigh, and there is none to comfort me; all my enemies have heard of my evil, they have rejoiced that thou hast done it; thou hast brought a day of consolation, and they shall be like unto me. Sin means ‘of teeth’. If you want to fill out the sense, you must add the following letter, thau, ‘signs’.b The ‘symbol’c of these two letters produces a mystical sense. By the teeth that grind up food and make it foreign to its old nature may be signified tribulations, which alter man’s happiness and by wearing it down change it into misery. Accordingly, in these two sentences are the greatest possible signs of tribulations: under the pressure of miseries the afflicted city curses those who afflict her. But no less, in foretelling the future, does she raise hopes, thinking that to fall along with the enemy is solace for her own ruin. It is remarkable how nature, or rather corrupted nature, so operates that the woes of its enemy mitigate its own tribulation. This is why the prospect of destruction, shared by her with neighbouring nations, removes a great burden of sorrow from Jerusalem. She makes their ill will look highly odious, when she says: They have heard that I sigh, and there is none to comfort me; all my enemies have heard of my evil, they have rejoiced that thou hast done it. It was worthy of beasts, and alien to human nature, not to feel for the destruction of so great a city; the human condition alone should have suggested the need for grief, the unstable fortune of mortals might have taught them to weep. We, who glimpse through the written record a faint shadow of the circumstances, cannot but feel sorrow; we cannot prevail on our minds not to mourn. Would they then not grieve, who heard from close by that Cf. Ps. 83, 7. signa is ambivalent. For the plural see Jerome used in Paschasius 1, 19201921. For the imperative meaning see I, 22, 4 (I, 3361-3362); III, 64-66, 2 (III, 2101). c  i.e. their putting together? a 

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a flourishing city had collapsed into ashes, and now needed the help of others after being accustomed to rule them? Yet they did not grieve, they did not offer help, they did not give solace: instead they gloated. In their shameless minds the itch to gloat was dominant: they had no thought for the destruction that was soon to follow for themselves. Given over to enjoyment and unrestrained in jest, they made matter for public joy what should have been greeted by loud public laments, the more because they saw God’s favour of old turned into the wrath of manifest vengeance: the pre-eminence of the race come to naught, a people close to God in part driven from its homeland, in part slaughtered. Yet while our lamenting city was bewailing things like this in particular, she burst out, suddenly and unexpectedly, with: Thou hast brought a day of consolation, and they shall be like unto me. This is of course what I was saying earlier,a that mortal man, greedy for revenge, in his hopes is already plunging his afflicter deep in disaster. In the meantime he finds consolation for his own ills in picturing the agonies undergone by others, ever waiting in anxious suspense for the coming of the torments he imagines for them. Now any one who reads histories and books of prophecy can see readily that the Babylonians in their mad onrush did in fact wipe out neighbouring nations: Ammonites, Moabites, Syrians, Edomites, Palestinians, Tyrians, and even the distant Egyptians. Nor did holy prophets ever cease to thunder out threats against those who exercised their trifling wits on the plight of the Jews, and bombarded them with bitter jests.b In the allegorical sense, the church groans when for a long time (as the apostle says) she looks for the redemption of her sons.c She is in labour for them when she longs , and brings them to birth when she baptises them; she is in labour for The reference is to the remarks above (I, 21, 1) on the comfort brought by one’s enemy’s downfall. Cf. also I, 5, 8. b  The last two sentences seem to back up the assertion that ‘they shall be like unto me’: the neighbouring nations, who failed to support Jerusalem against the Babylonians, and indeed taunted them (‘they have rejoiced’), in the end suffered the same fate. c  Cf. Luke 2, 38. a 

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them when she prays for them, and brings them to birth when she preaches to them. She feels pain on both occasions, before and after birth, if the outcome is not happy: beforehand if they are slow , afterwards if they go astray. And there is none to comfort her, for those who should have brought her honour cause her pain, and those who should have solaced her cause her disgrace. Comfort, for her, is the salvation of the peoples, her pain the straying of the peoples; her joy abundance of believers, her grief scarcity of the faithful. In fact, if all races were to present themselves, if all were to stream into the bosom of the faith, she will never feel her joy to be complete on earth, until she has what she promises to herself in the psalm: But as for me, I will appear before thy sight in justice: I shall be satisfied when thy glory shall be made manifest (Ps. 16, 15). For then she will see plain to her sight the Bridegroom after whom she has sighed for so long, ‘as is’ (to cite the blessed John).a You need to supply the words ‘possible for human nature’: as creature is able to see creator, as shaped is able to understand shaper, as product is able to have a mental conception of the producer. For no natural being will ever be able fully to comprehend His substance and divinity: otherwise He could not properly be called ‘incomprehensible’. Anything that can in any way be comprehended, visually or intellectually, must be comprehensible. If it is comprehensible, it can be delimited in space. If it can be delimited in space, it is corporeal. If it is corporeal, it is not eternal. But this is a topic for another occasion. Now let us listen to what the church said about her enemies. All my enemies have heard of my evil, they have rejoiced. The enemies are demons. Whatever evil is done in the church anywhere they hear of it, for they are highly acute by nature, and they come running at full speed. They rejoice with shameless delight, and apply all the force their wicked onrush can muster to make sure slips downhill. But because we are pressed by what folCf. 1 John 3, 2. The passage is hard to translate, for in the biblical citation the subject of est is God, while in what follows William proposes a new complement: ‘as is possible to human nature’. a 

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lows, that thou hast done it; thou hast brought a day of consolation, and they shall be like unto me, the whole sentence must be given a different slant.a We should therefore understand it to be spoken in the name of the church about persecutors. The more these saw the church under pressure, the more overjoyed they became, belching abuse at heaven: He (they said) could not be God who saw such torments suffered by His family—and laughed. God is said to have ‘done’ these ills because He tolerated them, or because He actually did do them (as another prophet says: Is there evil in a city, which the Lord hath not done? (Amos 3, 6)). For there are two types of bad thing, one which God does, the other which man does. A bad thing man does is sin; a bad thing God does is vengeance. Still, if you go to the heart of the matter, so far as God, the agent, is concerned, is not bad, for it is just; so far as man, the sufferer, is concerned, it is bad, because it is dis­ agreeable. Now as to what follows, Thou hast brought a day of consolation, and they shall be like unto me, it is to be referred to those who, after bringing dreadful persecutions on the church, have in the end renounced their errors and embraced a sounder course. This, I think, is why the letter sin, ‘of teeth’, prefaced our understanding,b for the teeth of the church ground down the hardness of the wicked and made it pass over into her own body. Hence to the first shepherd of the church was said: Arise, Peter; kill and eat (Acts 10, 13), meaning ‘bring over to your faith men who have been worn down, and changed from their ill-doing’. Of these teeth the Bridegroom says to the Bride in the Song of Songs: Thy teeth as a flock of sheep, which came up from the washing (S. of S. 6, 5). Innocent in life, unblemished in the faith, they tear and crop vice with charity, without their bite having any malice in it. When therefore such men, who had earlier been the church’s ravening enemies, are not merely brought into her brotherhood but even promoted to rule her, how great (do you imagine) is the a  Compare an earlier passage (I, 13, 4), where William revises a first explanation in the light of succeeding words. ‘nisi angustaret nos quod sequitur’, ‘were it not that what comes next caused us a problem’, there corresponds to ‘because we are pressed by what follows’ here. b  i.e. it was attached to this verse to help us understand it.

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comfort! I could supply instances to make my words clearer, but my meaning is obvious and needs little gloss.a The enemies of the soul, further, are demons, who are all too present among us. And even if they are not present, they are so sharp that they notice everything that goes on around her. Then they pounce with all speed, and when she is already sliding voluntarily they give her an extra push. They hear that she sighs under the stress of calamity, and they bring no comfort. ‘Bring no comfort’? Rather, they thrust her into destruction. They send the vices of the soul headlong, like a river in spate, because of the presumption of hope or the uncertainty of despair. For with these to spur them on, men are in peril on both flanks, some because they put their hopes in God’s mercy and lose impetus in striving towards the good, others because in their desperation they rush recklessly into any and every crime. Indeed, encourage and goad her on to deserve banishment to the place where all that is good and pleasant is absent, where all that is bad and gloomy is present. Of that place is said: There is neither knowledge nor reason in hell, whither thou art hastening (Eccles. 9, 10). The blessed Job shuddered at it, and longed to escape it: Suffer me, Lord, that I may lament my sorrow a little: before I go to a land that is dark and covered with the mist of death: a land of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death, and no order, but everlasting horror dwelleth (Job 10, 20-22). That is where that foul guest, who was not worthy to have on a wedding garment, was thrust down at the Lord’s command: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 22, 13). There will be no comforter in a place where everyone concentrates on his own misery with no feeling for another’s. Shared punishment leaves no room for sympathy with . Worse, the minions of the demons, envious by nature, evil for no reward, taunt the wretched souls. It can well be believed that they hurl bitter taunts at souls because, suffering by the just judgement

William is presumably thinking in particular of St Paul. Cf. III, 1-3, 11; III, 13-15, 8 and III, 16-18, 5 on persecutors being won over. a 

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of God, they have gone down to the horrid filth given to men so that they might fill up their place.a ‘Look,’ theyb say, ‘at the souls which, priding themselves on the power of their Christ, hoped to ascend to the region that once was ours!c Look at the souls which, once rebels against our laws, thought to escape our hands by means of the Cross! We have conquered, we have subjugated our rivals! We have satisfied our wrath, our envy has turned out well. They have nowhere to flee to, nowhere to go. Let them meanwhile receive their punishment, and flatter themselves on the power of their king. We shall be able to bear more easily a penalty we shall not have to pay alone. It is a pleasure to be punished if Christianity has been overthrown. Even tortures taste sweet if they are suffered by Christ’s people as well. Let them receive this service from usd in return for the violence with which they broke our power, and stole from us the peoples of the just.’ But for all the demons’ nonsensical chatter, the day will come when they will not be allowed to wander merrily through the empty spaces of the world like this, but will be chained in hell together with those they have deceived. There in the lowest furnaces they will suck in and vomit up vaporous fires, there they will pay both for their own pride and for the sins of men. But assuredly no torment will be found sufficient to punish all their evil deeds, for each one of those deeds surpasses all penalties. Meanwhile, if I may dare to say it, if I may dare to believe it, souls will derive some slight comfort from the misery suffered by the demons. An unhappy and pitiful fellowship, to be relieved by the ills suffered by one’s fellows! A comfort not to be wished, bought not by any inconvenience to oneself, but at the cost of another’s peril! 1, 22. Thau. Let all their evil be present before thee, and make vintage of them, as thou hast made i.e. that of the demons. The souls of the wicked are sent to hell, where they fill the place left by the demons who now wander abroad in the air (cf. I, 21, 12; I, 22, 9). b  i.e. the minions of the demons. c  Cf. I, 5, 8, where the demons are envious of a soul that strives towards heaven, from which they were turned out for their pride. d  Ironic; the demons mean their victory over Christianity. a 

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vintage of me for all my iniquities; for my sighs are many, and my heart is sorrowful. The afflicted city had already used almost the same words to brand her enemies, she had already launched the spears of her curses against them: nothing said once only is enough to satisfy someone burning with the thirst for vengeance. She begs, therefore, that they should be punished with no less a disaster than she. It is true that they were doing God’s will, but they fulfilled it not with good intentions, but because the sting of envy goaded them on. She acknowledges that she has deserved her sufferings, and will bear them with equanimity if ‘all their evil’ is surveyed by God’s eye and weighed in His balance. So she introduces the image of the vintage, complaining that they have made vintage of her. She asks for great diligence to be employed in return: just as nothing lovely in the city could escape their methodical plundering, so may they come up against diligent destroyers, and find no means of escaping their savagery. I have mentioned beforea that the people of Israel was the vineyard of God, and the psalmist witnesses to this also, when he says of its planting: Thou hast brought a vineyard out of Egypt: thou has cast out the Gentiles and planted it (Ps. 79, 9), and of its uprooting: The boar out of the wood hath laid it waste: and a singular wild beast hath devoured it (Ps. 79, 14). Also the prophet Isaiah, concerning the planting: My beloved had a vineyard on a hill in a fruitful place (Isa. 5, 1),b and then: The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel (Isa. 5, 7); but concerning the uprooting: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be wasted (Isa. 5, 5). So too the Lord Himself in the Gospel: There was a man an householder, who planted a vineyard, and made a hedge round about it (Matt. 21, 33). I have given several pieces of evidence, and been lavish with words, to make sure that even the slowest wit may understand that the vineyard of God is a well-ordered people; but I did not add an explanation of the testimonies, so as not to digress too far. Now Apparently at I, 12, 9 (I, 1897-1899) (rather different). So Douai. The Latin means literally ‘on a hill-top [TLL s.v. cornu 971, 34-41], son of oil’. a 

b 

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why is the people figured under the name of ‘vineyard’? For the moment, the reason that presents itself nearest at hand is this: if a vine is neglected by the husbandmen, it grows with a luxuriance that is unpropitious and infertile. But if it is cut back by a skilled hand, and pruned at the proper season, it sprouts in a fertile and productive manner. So also with a people: if it wanders with no check on its pleasures, it will be rebellious towards God, and will strive towards evil. But if its vices are cut away by the knives of laws and rulers, it will bear fruit that is appropriate to itself and welcome to God. Three things in particular are mentioned in connection with the vine: shoot, branch and grape.a By the shoot, which defends the branches from damage by heat or cold, may be understood the chiefs, warlike men who look after the rest; by the branch, the lowly commoners, who creep along the ground, unless they are raised off it by the help of the more powerful; by the grape, the priests, who, laden with the dew of heaven, refresh their hearers with a most health-giving juice. But all of these were torn out, uprooted and cast aside when the destructive Babylonian arrived, laid siege and burst in. So the lamenting city, for a short while laying aside her curses upon the enemy, returns to her own troubles, saying: For my sighs are many, and my heart is sorrowful. True enough is the proverb ‘where there is pain, there is the finger’. Where I feel pain, there I scratch. That is why, at a point where her pain was increasing, the city’s complaint returns to bewailing her own miseries, rather than continuing to dwell on the injuries done by others. However far the onrush of her complaints carries her, the sink of her sorrows goes with her always. Hence (I think) the prefixing here of the letter thau, meaning ‘sign’,b for the prophet perhaps implies: ‘Take note, you who hear; make a mark, you who read’, that the end of the poem corresponds to its start. There we had: How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! The mistress of the Gentiles a  See R. A. B. Mynors on Vergil, Georg. 2, 333: ‘The woody vine-branches which remain on the stock throughout the winter, and are shortened by the pruner, are the palmites. Buds formed on these break in the spring … and produce the rampant green shoots which bear leaves and grape-clusters, and these are the pampini.’ b  Here a verb (cf. I, 21, 1 n.).

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is become as a widow! (Lam. 1, 1). Here: My sighs are many, and my heart is sorrowful. There the subjects of lament were solitude and being ‘widowed’ of good things, here sad and constantly recurring sighs. Ia do not know what to bewail more, that I am full of ills or empty of good. If you turn this sentence in the direction of allegory, you must not apply most of it to the whole church. For we cannot while maintaining our faith say that she is as a whole afflicted by the multitude of her iniquities, since the apostle says that God presented her to Himself not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing (Eph. 5, 27). But we should not be frightened because she appears to be wishing evil upon her enemies: she does this not meaning to curse but intending a prophecy. (Forb no one should say that the Lord hated those who crucified Him. That heavenly mouth in fact prayed for them, saying: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23, 34). Yet in another passage He does attack them: Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; and with the just they will not be written (Ps. 68, 29). But if we want to cleanse the storm cloud of curses by taking the words in a spiritual sense, we shall be forced to concede that what we shuddered at because we thought it a curse is in fact intended as a wish. Forc when we read in the psalm: Let them be confounded and ashamed, that seek after my soul to take it away (Ps. 39, 15), these words are with no impropriety interpreted as referring to Christ by those who know how the most relentless of persecutors, overcome by shame for their own sins, are reverently caused to drink the bloodd which they sought so perversely to shed.) So in this passage the church asks that the evils of her enemies may be scattered by the eye of the God of pity, so that they are not of the number of those to whom He speaks through the prophet: When you multiply prayer, I will not hear you: and when you stretch forth your hands, I will turn away my face from you (Isa. 1, 15). Let them therefore be made a The city speaks. William goes into a similar difficulty before returning to the exposition of the present passage at ‘So in this …’. I have put brackets round the digression. c  Another passage in the Psalms that looks like a curse is now explained away. d  At communion. For persecutors being brought into the fold, see I, 21, 8 n. a 

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vintage in this world to ensure that they escape perpetual tribulation, and may all in them that was put in turmoil by the pleasurable drunkenness of things secular be dissipated by the miseries of tribulation. For the church itself is made up of sinners and publicans; and anything that was harmful to their internal juices has been squeezed out and cast aside by the press of penance. This is why the Vintager Himself says: I came not to call the just, but sinners to penance (Luke 5, 32). (But He is also the great and excellent treader of tribulations.)a A saying full of faith and worthy of acceptance by everyone!—Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief.b Wherefore the church, having received the charge to love her neighbour as herself,c wishes thought to be taken for her enemies as for herself, because she too has become beautiful after being ugly, and a friend after being an enemy. So she says to the faithful souls of patriarchs and prophets in the Song of Songs: I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem: so the king hath loved me and hath brought me into his chamber (S. of S. 1, 3-4), as though to say: ‘I am black by my deserts, but beautiful by God’s gift. So Christ loved His gifts in me, and brought me into the secrets of His kingdom.’ Indeed, elsewhere in the Song of Songs, she shows herself to be vineyard as a wholed and keeper of the vineyard in part: The sons of my mother have fought against me, they have made me the keeper in the vineyards (S. of S. 1, 5). The sons of the mother of the church are the Jews, the sons of the synagogue.e Fighting against her and driving her from Judaea, they made her go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles,f where the very vineyard of God might be planted more freely, be listened to more gladly, and flourish more richly. With this schema what I said beforeg about the vineyard does not disagree either. For the a  This sentence reminds us parenthetically that God is not just the vintager of sinners. calcator is used of a treader of grapes e.g. in Jer. 48, 33. b  Cf. 1 Tim. 1, 15. c  Cf. Matt. 19, 19. d  The contrast seems to be between the general identification of church and vineyard and the particularity of her being made the keeper of the vineyard. e  Cf. I, 7, 8. f  Cf. John 7, 35. g  Cf. I, 22, 3.

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more she was oppressed by the Gentiles who persisted in cutting her down, the more she rebelled against them and grew up to bear fruit. So she says in the psalm: When I called upon him, the God of my justice heard me: when I was in distress, thou hast enlarged me (Ps. 4, 2). But her sighs are many, and her heart sorrowful, for if the persecutions of the Gentiles ever cease, she is torn apart by the behaviour of her sons. Even if they are corrected by the urgency of her preaching, yet she is always without complete comfort so long as she is in exile from her Bridegroom. It remains for the moral explanation to play its role in connection with this sentence. It is agreed that the soul, given over as she is to earthly feelings, would, if she could, act wrongly with impunity. She therefore hates torturers and tortures, for it is with an eye on them that she somehow or other manages to curb herself. She grieves for her lot in being constrained within a narrow body, while her enemies, the demons, can roam freely throughout the air. She envies them such freedom to wander abroad, and laments her own wretched imprisonment. So, as far as she can, she tries by her prayers to ensure that no evil they perform escapes the rigour of God; in this way, while lamenting their successes, she may one day rejoice in their torments. Wherefore let their wanton liberty be suppressed, and their unrestrained ambition for power; their happiness lies in loss to men, their rejoicing lies in our ruin. How shameful it would be if they were to prevail: for their vast power results in their being able to do virtually all the evil they wish— and never being able to do something evil that they do not wish! The soul’s lot is different: she wishes to do many things without being able to do them, and is able to do many things without wishing to. Thus she reasonably enough desires that the same cutting back of evil by which she is herself limited should by God’s judgement affect demons too. She is happily compared to a vineyard, in which, according to Jeremiah, God planted all true seed,a so that there should be no sprouting of virtues that is not an essential part of her nature. But thanks to her own vice she has brought forth

a 

Cf. Jer. 2, 21.

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such extensive growths of evil that unless the hand of the merciful pruner is brought to bear, she perishes by excess of luxuriance. This sentence can be understood of the soul when she has already been handed over for torture, and is assailing with imprecations the enemies whose malice deceived her and brought her into such misery. She prays that their malevolence may not go unpunished, but quickly fall into the same darkness, so that, while God is busy punishing them, she may in the meantime herself proclaim a joyful holiday. In fact what she wishes for them is only an appropriate requital, that they should be thrust into the same straits into which they have driven so many miserable souls. But whichever way you choose to take it, either of the soul in hell or the soul confined to the body, what comes next is equally appropriate: My sighs are many, and my heart is sorrowful. For there are many ‘sighs’ in which, just when you most hope to have escaped them, you shudder to find yourself particularly entangled; and there are many sorrows that roam along labyrinths of error, intertwined with one another. Thus first corresponds to middle, middle to last: if you evade the first, you are seized by the middle, if you escape the middle you are snared by the last. In fact tribulation sports with us as nature does with onions, which it has wrapped in so many skins that if you remove one you find another, and once that is taken off you come across a third. You will lose interest in stripping them away before the countless skins run out. But I could talk of these matters until my readers grow bored, as material in support of the truth kept suggesting itself. But my discourse has now travelled a long way, and turned out to be on a more lavish scale than I had planned. I must spare the ears of my readers, supposing any have deigned to take notice of my words.a So let me close Book One, even at this late stage: I am given the hint by the example of the prophet, who cut short his first alphabet at this point.

hanc lectionem, apparently ‘this book they are reading’; for II, 3, 6 (II, 257) see n. there. For readers and reading in the commentary see CC CM 244, p. xiv n. 25. At I, 7, 7 (I, 1062-1063) and III, 16-18, 7 (III, 832) lectio means a passage in the Bible. a 

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Prologue The first of Jeremiah’s alphabets is complete and I am getting ready to pass on to the second. If anyone should seek to cast aspersions on my temerity in venturing on such a burdensome work, two things stand by to console me. The first is that, if not for others, for me assuredly meditations of this kind are a great incentive to the pursuit of good. For sometimes, when I am pondering on these subjects, pleasures not a little distract me; but, if they ever court my favour, my own words are there to counsel me not to give in. He pronounces sentence on himself who lives ill while speaking well. He brings a verdict down on his own head who is out of tune with his own words where good is at stake: for one whose speech is contrary to his actions lays information that leads to his own conviction. The second reason for comfort is that I think it quite unreasonable to set myself against you, my friend,a when you are so insistent. Someone who is not ashamed to resist a friend, at least in a good cause, is shown up as ignorant of the law of friendship, which rules not just the elements here belowb but the circling stars themselves. So let me cut the cackle and go on with the journey I have begun, led by Him who said: I am the way, and the truth, and the life (John 14, 6). At this point the reader should noThe frater amantissimus addressed in Prol., 1. i.e. earth and water. rotat in the Latin (‘whirls’) applies only to the stars, and I have had to adjust the translation accordingly. a 

b 

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tice that I am not pursuing further the meanings of the Hebrew letters:a anyone who pays attention will be able to make them yield important lessons—and I shall be spared the trouble. 2, 1. How hath the Lord covered with obscurity the daughter of Sion in his wrath! He hath cast down from heaven the glorious land of Israel, and hath not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger! I have often explainedb (and it will not come as a novelty to the reader) why the Lord is said to have done certain things that He permits to happen. Thus here He is said to have covered the people of Sion with obscurity, when He did not do this, but allowed it to happen because her inhabitants so deserved. That city had been famous far and wide for her illustrious history, the abundance of her riches, the nobility of her citizens, and, most important of all, her distinguished religious practice. Now, however, the prophet marvels that the light of liberty and fame has been dimmed, and she has been so darkened that almost no memory of her remains: her people have been led away and her enemies are triumphant. For it added to her calamities that after the downfall of the famous city and the holy temple all the people of the land were dragged off in procession. This is rarely read of as having happened elsewhere, for, even if cities fall victim to violent conquerors, their people are not all expelled: they can repair their fortunes and apply a remedy. But Jerusalem, drained both of her own citizens and of the surrounding population, sank into obscurity and disappeared into darkness. Yet it was a land of renown, equipped by nature to be very productive and to respond in good measure to the cultivator’s hand.c According to the historians,d you would not easily find a part of it that was not studded with vineyards, or flowery with orchards and groves, or luxuriant with grain crops, or at least In book 2 William does not even prefix them to the lemmata, expecting readers to apply them for themselves. But he returns to discussion of them in Book 3 (though see II, 22, 2 on thau). b  At I, 17, 7; I, 21, 7; also below II, 3, 1; III, 4-6, 2; III, 7-9, 9; III, 43-45, 5. c  ad gratiam apparently means something like ‘liberally’. d  Cf. Hegesippus 3, 6, 4-5, citing Exod. 13, 5. a 

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notable for its buildings. The Jews, who know all and press their wording hard,a were justified in thinking that this land had been promised them by the Lord. But seemed to have been cast down from heaven when , who is believed in particular to dwell in her because of the purity of the elements,b allowed her to be trampled underfoot by the unworthy. The temple had collapsed into ashes. The prophet calls it the footstool of God, because in the past He used to hasten to listen kindly and with clemency to those who invoked Him there. But in that murderous war God seemed not to have remembered it, but rather to be wrathful: for all the prayers, all the groans of the wretched, He was not to be won over. Himself unmoved, He allowed the hard to be chastised by a fearful scourge, when He saw that they would remain wicked if they went unpunished. For it is a true saying, though not the ordinary view, that the wicked are more to be pitied when they roam free than when they are punished, and not just when those penalties aim at their reform or at that of those who look on, but even when all hope of correction is abandoned and they waste away amid their torments. He who is empty of all good and is carried headlong towards vice is more unfortunate than he who, admonished by his own sufferings, is reined in by the justice of God. Understood allegorically, ‘the daughter of Sion’ and ‘the glorious land of Israel’ and ‘God’s footstool’ mean holy church. ‘The daughter of Sion’, because, striving to ‘look at’ heaven as Sion does,c she shapes the behaviour of her members after Sion’s form, just like a good daughter imitating her good mother. ‘The glorious land of Israel’, because she already longs to take possession of the everlasting land: she says in the psalms I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living (Ps. 26, 13). For though by ‘the land’ the scriptures usually mean the earthly hearts of the If I understand this correctly, William is more than a little ironical about the promise of Israel to the Jews. But the wording is obscure. b  Cf. John the Scot, Periphys. 3, 39. But this purity applies to heaven rather than to Jerusalem. c  Cf. below, §  7 n. Earlier (I, 4, 2), William similarly called Sion a look-out place (specula). a 

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wicked, they sometimes use it in a good sense, as in Psalm 1, which, after representing our Lord Jesus Christ and His followers by the metaphor of the fruitful tree, added: Not so the wicked, not so: but like the dust, which the wind driveth from the face of the land (Ps. 1, 3-4), as if to say openly: Christ the Lord and His followers provide for good works the fruit of a good conscience, but the wicked will be imitators of the Devil, like a man who is a stranger to the fat of good and wanders subject to the empty fickleness of pride; he is driven by the onrush of the Holy Spirit from the face of the church, which is stable in behaviour and faith. She is glorious in the growth of good works, and already now tastes the joys of the vision of God, whom she will see fully in the future life. But in case anyone thinks I am haling off sentences into captivity against their will, let him hear how the Lord Himself used ‘land’ in a good sense, when He says: Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land (Matt. 5, 4). It is plain that He was not talking about the landa that we perceive by our senses, for here the meek are thought unfit to rule because of their gentle natures, while those who lie back in their tyrannical hauteur, emitting frothy words, are raised high and gain preferment because of their greatness of heart. The church is also ‘God’s footstool’, because, in a way weary, as He says through Isaiah, of bearing the iniquities of the unfaithful,b He reclines on her as on a most welcome seat. But this daughter of Sion, for all her distinction, is ‘covered with obscurity’ when one of her sons loses the light of holiness and grows pale, because of the dark cloud of disbelief or the filth of vice. And she is ‘cast down from heaven’ when she descends from the high citadel of the virtues to earthly preoccupations. Alternatively, represents the views of the faithless, who thought that she was not remembered in heaven when they saw her abused and tormented. And the same meaning will be found in what is put next, He hath not remembered his footstool. The Lord Himself bears witness that His footstool is the church when He I have translated terra throughout this passage as ‘land’ rather than ‘earth’, in view of the lemma, but it sounds less appropriate here. b  Cf. Isa. 1, 14. a 

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says in another place: Heaven is my throne, and the earth my footstool (Isa. 66, 1). By ‘heaven’ here you should understand the part of the church that already reigns with Christ, and by ‘earth’ the part that is still sweating it out in the dust of the world. Now God did not seem to be remembering this footstool when it was subject to the reproaches of the Gentiles, spat upon, and trampled on by persecution. But because each and every person of faith is part of the whole church (as the apostle says: For he who is joined to the head, is made one body),a this verse can appropriately enough be made to fit the Christian soul. She is well called the daughter of Sion, for she was created to ‘look at’ the glory of her Creator. When someone imitates the works of another, he is in the scriptures called his son. For instance, holy preachers are called gods, and all the sons of the most High (Ps. 81, 6), while the Jews are called sons of the devil (1 John 3, 10), whose will they wished to do. The ‘sons of men’ are those who are dull of heart.b Rightly then is the soul that with unblinking gaze concentrates on ‘looking at’ God called a daughter of Sion (for ‘Sion’ means ‘looking’),c and also ‘the glorious land of Israel’, which sprouts flowers of virtues, remaining constant in them, and gaining from them the strength to see God in perfection. Of this soul is said in the psalm (though the phrase can also be taken literally without harm to religion): The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof (Ps. 23, 1). For the church, amid the bitter whirlpools and warring rivers of the world, is thanks to the power of the Lord founded on an unshakeable barricaded of reasonings. All that is good in her universal body is drawn from the grace of Him of whom John says: Of his fulness we all have received grace for grace (John 1, 16); that is, the grace of the palm for the grace of doing good works. It is His grace if we deserve the Based on 1 Cor. 6, 16-17. Cf. Ps. 4, 3. c  Cf. Isidore, Etym. 15, 1, 5: ‘because she was constructed on a high point, and can survey things that come from afar.’ Cf. above, § 4 n. d  The metaphor is mixed: obex is not a foundation but a barrier. William perhaps thinks of the reasonings forming a dyke protecting the church against flooding rivers. a 

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crown, His if we achieve it. A soul was therefore fertile in virtue, and glorious, and fit for seeing God—if only through His grace she made the effort. Equally she was God’s footstool—if only she were sustained by eager obedience to Him,a and did not go rolling down to the depths to indulge her own whim. We know that these dignified names could have been applied to her: would that we did not know how ugly she has become, with what obscurity of tribulation she is covered, with what darkness of vice she is filled, so that she is becoming dark as she departs from the light.b It is under pressure from her deserts that He appears to have forgotten her, allowing her to wallow miserably in vice in this world, and to be punished by being tormented in hell. He does not deign to have her as His footstool, for she is the seat of filth, to whom, according to the prophet, the princes of malice themselves say: Bow down, that we may go over (Isa. 51, 23). Yet, O Lord, who are just in revenge that you may be merciful in forgiveness, look upon us; you are our father, we are dirt. The dirty body drags the soul to misery, but do you, gentle and most indulgent father, grant us mercy even though we do not deserve it. If the father scorns his daughter, who will pity her? If the maker rejects his product, who will receive it? If you give virtue, it is easy to stand. If you stretch out your hand to the fallen soul, it is easy for her to get up again. Dispel the obscurity of vice and foster in her the growths of virtue, so that she may enjoy perpetual repose. 2, 2. The Lord hath cast down headlong, and hath not spared, all that was beautiful in Jacob; he hath destroyed in his wrath the fortifications of the virgin of Juda, and brought them down to the ground; he hath made the kingdom unclean, and the princes thereof. The prophet often repeats something that was causing him grief. His grief assimilates his sadness by means of unpretentious words, passing on to God the odium of the destruction. ‘For a Obedientia seems awkwardly to govern illi, ‘to him’. For the construction cf. II, 72 ‘a sanctitatis pallescit lumine’, and esp. IV, 10331034 ‘a contemplatione superni luminis obtenebrescunt’. See also IV, 1, 7 n. a 

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long time,’ he says, ‘God favoured with blessings, to draw us on.a For a long time He uttered loud threats, to terrify us. Our perversity overcame His patience, and He burst out in wrath. Like a torrent, without any merciful sparing,b He cast down all that was beautiful in Jacob, blazing up the more vehemently because of His previous forbearance.’ And because has said that everything had been destroyed, he now goes into detail about ‘everything’, the three things, namely, that especially hold a country together: the fortifications of its cities, which guard those infirm by reason of sex or age, and the king whose authority and the princes whose counsel protect those subject to them. The overturning of all three is lamented by the prophet, when he sees the walls destroyed, the kingship cast down, and the princes humbled, like something unclean. In the allegorical sense, the church is rightly called ‘Jacob’. For he, having by laudable means striven to possess the first birthright and heritage of the older Esau,c took the name ‘supplanter’.d Similarly, the church, when the synagogue hesitated or rather declined, passed over into the adoption of childrene of God when the people of Israel, deprived of His blessing because of their lack of faith, gave place to their betters. Therefore the church, because she is betrothed to one beautiful above the sons of men (Ps. 44, 3), herself shines forth in beauty, as the psalmist says of her to that same Bridegroom: The queen stood on thy right hand, in gilded clothing; surrounded with variety (Ps. 44, 10). By ‘gilded clothing’ is understood wisdom, by clothes of varied colour the good life. The first wisdom is to confess God and know Him; for example: The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God (Ps. 13, 1 = 52, 1). The second is to live well. Therefore the church is golden with faith, and bejewelled with a variety of virtues. Just as she dazzles disbeApparently towards Him. misericordiae seems to define the sparing. For the general sense, cf. § 3 ‘nec parcit Dominus, sed absque ullo clementiae intuitu uidetur furere’, ‘the Lord does not spare, but appears to be wrathful without any thought of clemency’. c  Cf. Gen. 25, 31-34. d  Cf. I, 17, 8 n. e  Cf. Eph. 1, 5. a 

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II, 2 (1.) – II, 3 (1.)

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lievers by her miracles and the brilliance of her reasonings, so she caresses the pious with the sweetness of virtues and the hope of rewards. But there has often been a time—and especially now— when in certain of her members all that is beautiful in her rolls down into the pit of vice. Nowadays kings and powerful laymen scorn the life of the religious, and take away their wealth. Nowadays the ‘princes’, that is the rulers of the church, are so crazy that it is not enough for them to live bad lives themselves: they needs must be eager to corrupt others too, by word as well as example. Thus, with the destruction of those who should (as it were) be fortifying the church behind solid ramparts, some within, some without, the ‘daughters of Judah’, by whom we understand the untutored souls of their subjects, are laid open to ruin and made captive to be plundered. The Lord does not spare, but appears to be wrathful without any thought of clemency. So it is that the prophetic spirit seems to me to have been correct in predicting the vices of the present times. The human soul has fallen into this same calamity. The divine hand sowed a nursery of virtues in her, but she was ‘supplanted’a at the Devil’s instigation and lost all the beauty she had. Nor does God spare her, for He leaves her to be swept off at His pleasure. The only way he could spare her would be to use pious violence to curb her. But mercy restrains itself b to avoid justice being violated; for it would be unjust for man to be deprived of his free will. So whatever the soul had that was beautiful has perished, whether it was virginal in purity or royal in dignity, strong in her wall of humility or distinguished by her princely prudence. God looks on at this from on high, and lets the soul toss on a sea of miseries as she deserves. Blessed the soul that does not abuse the patience of the merciful Watcher, but, so long as she remains in the body, strives towards her origins! 2, 3. He hath broken in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel. He hath drawn back his right hand Lit. ‘tripped up’; the earlier etymology of Jacob is alluded to. i.e. God is reluctant to be merciful because He wishes to be just; but, equally, He is unwilling to force man to be good. a 

b 

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from the face of the enemy, and he hath kindled in Jacob as it were a flaming fire devouring round about. The scriptures call the king’s strength among the people of Israel ‘the horn’. Thus Anna: The Lord shall give empire to his king, and shall exalt the horn of his Christ (1 Kgs. 2, 10), and Zachary: He hath raised up an horn of salvation to us, in the house of David his servant (Luke 1, 69). For just as in animals the horn is soft like flesh while it is first growing, but soon projects in solid bone, and finally becomes blunt with old age, so the kingship of that people was tender in Saul, solid and knotty in David, blunt and decayed in Hezekiah. After that, indeed, it was altogether broken: although there were some kings after the Maccabees, they were only indirectly related to the royal line and had not the same firm bravery. Then, too, as their enemies turned upon it the grim face of cruelty, God did not take the trouble to stretch out the right hand of His power to defend it. The result was that, what with the violence of the enemy and God’s refusal to act, the fire of tribulation had free rein round about the city and its hinterland, and consumed the Jews utterly. I have often said,a but do not tire of repeating, that God is said to do all these things, though He is in fact merely permitting them to take place as the victims deserve. In the scriptures ‘horn’ is allegorically understood to signify the two personages, the sacerdotal and the kingly, which should guard the lower orders, one with words, the other with the sword. Thus Samuel takes the horn of oil to anoint David,b intimating that from his stock will be born the Lord who was to take upon Himself the mystery of both personages. This horn is broken in the church when kings and bishops, who ought to have protected the common people of God against spiritual and carnal wickedness, themselves slackly succumb to vices, their virtues of soul being bent towards the worse yokes of life.c What are the commons to do then, deprived of comfort and corrupted by example? It is Cf. II, 1, 1 n. Cf. 1 Kgs. 16, 13. c  William clumsily adapts words from Prudentius, Psychomachia 896-7. a 

b 

180

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II, 3 (1.-4.)

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assuredly a great sign of the Lord’s wrath if rulers are permitted to brood over their pleasures and entangle themselves in luxury. When a defender is lacking, the flame of temptations first pollutes then feeds upon the whole of a people, just as a fire which had began by playfully flying over the fence is soon in full earnest consuming the house itself. Meanwhile God is patient; He does not hurl at the guilty the vengeance of His punishing hand, but prefers that the fault should be lost rather than His own nature.a They for their part, with covert stubbornness or open shamelessness, try to do what is forbidden, and strive against the commandments of God. But how few men there are, not least bishops, who veil their vices or cover up their wicked deeds even out of shame for their rank! Rather they make them public, volunteering boastfully that they scorn their office and are making a show in the world. They even promote their relatives to church honours, to enable them to take over their sins as if by inheritance: they make them, in fact, their successors on the road to evil, ready to reproduce the sins after the death of the sinners. Yet these people (the effrontery of it!) dare to slander the lives of monks with their envenomed tongues, to nibble away at their substance and cancel their privileges. Indeed for a long time now they have even been grudging monks the word ‘singularity’, though they are seriously split, not about how to behave but about how to dress!b Morally, I understand by the horn of the soul her ruling capacity,c reason, which was conferred on me by God to enable me to repel harmful promptings as they assail me. The other capacities, irascibility and concupiscibility, are present in other living That is, He is prepared that a fault should go unpunished rather than that He should be untrue to His forebearing nature. Dr Sønnesyn prefers to take naturam as referring to man’s nature, comparing the argument at II, 2, 4 (II, 170-172). b  singularitas at III, 25-28, 11 (III, 1220) appears to mean ‘solitude’. The precise meaning here is uncertain (as also at Mir. p. 96) but exactness on that point is not required to appreciate that William is (conceivably) contriving a sort of pun; he points out that the bishops who make these criticisms are plural rather than ‘singular’, in the sense that they do not agree among themselves—on the trivial matter of clothes! c  uirtus: the capacity that rules over the other two; for the three see Prol., 9 with n. a 

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things too; only the human animal has active reason. If I on occasion fall away from it on some impulse, I am well aware that I am acting against reason. If I am reproached, I take pains to construct excuses to prove that I have not strayed from the path of reason. But though I may persuade others, I am aware of the truth, and I rage inside myself. This horn is broken in me when (which God forfend!) I persevere in evil to the end. How wretched I am! God, offended by my evil doings, does not deign to reach out the hand of His clemency, to stop me presuming to follow the face of the Enemy as he goes ahead. Then indeed, there being no one to fight back, the bubbles of all incentives to vice swell up and the cauldron boils over; nor is there anyone to put it out unless the dew of the Holy Spirit is dripped over it. O would that the dew of Hermon,a that is, of humiliation, may descend upon me, making of me Mount Sion, so that for the present I may ‘look at’ the glory of God in hope, and in the future in fact. And I beg you, most kind Lord Jesus, lover of men, who with the precious stream of your blood washed away the stain of all the world: use that same blood to put out in me the Babylonian furnace,b so that if I escape Sodom’s guilt I may also escape Sodom’s penalty: for that city blazed up with sulphurous fire just because she had burned with the fire of desire. For nothing is more filthy than luxury,c which pollutes the very air with its foul example. On the other hand, the apostle said of himself and those like him: We are the good odour of Christ unto God (2 Cor. 2, 15), and the Bride in the Song of Songs: My spikenard sent forth the odour of sweetness (S. of S. 1, 11). A good odour, which wins over even angels to rejoice; good spikenard, which by the repute of its sweetness brings good order to the perverse behaviour of men! Reader, you must recall that I have often told how Jacob and Israel and Sion and Jerusalem can be understood allegorically and morally.d Please therefore do not be vexed with me if I avoid labour Cf. Ps. 132, 3. Cf. Dan. 3, 19. c  With more than a hint of ‘sexual licentiousness’. d  For Jacob and Jerusalem see I, 17, 8, for Israel and Sion II, 1, 4, with the notes on those passages. a 

b 

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II, 3 (4.) – II, 4 (2.)

1.

2.

for myself and boredom for you. What profit you get from reading thisa is up to you; as for me, I have taken a deal of trouble to impress upon you, time and time again, one and the same idea in different language. 2, 4. He hath bent his bow as an enemy, he hath strengthened his right hand as an adversary, and he hath killed all that was fair to behold in the tabernacle of the daughter of Sion, and hath poured out his indignation like fire. It is plain that the Jews perished by the bow lurking at a distance and the sword raging close at hand; plain too that the temple, most fair to behold and most awesome to approach, was set on fire by the Babylonians. And these three things were so effective in emptying the city of any number of people that it was reasonable enough that God Himself should have been thought to be sending shafts from His bow, arming His right hand with a sword, and hurling thunderbolts at buildings. Now God’s bow is His hidden anger, and the strengthening of His right hand His open punishment. He bends His bow at the church when He allows her to be scourged by His hidden judgements; He strengthens His right hand against her when He harasses her with open attacks. He scourges her either by the persecutions of outsiders or by the evil ways of her own people. Both are scourges, but one is more destructive, the other more harsh; the one more harmful, the other more damnable; the one more hateful, the other more common. Finally, the one always chastises with a view to forgiveness and often to glory, but the other never with a view to anything but punishment. The result of these two scourges is what follows, the killing of everything that is fair in the church: by the one visibly, by the other invisibly;b in the one case spiritually, in the other bodily. For, to speak literally, sometimes the turmoil of pagan persecution overthrew churches; destroyThis passage? This book as a whole? For lectio see on I, 22, 13. In each of the five preceding pairs, the scourge of persecution comes first. In the following clause, it is referred to second (‘bodily’). One might expect hic to refer to the ‘present’ case of the bad morals, corresponding to istud in the previous contrast. In that case the text need adjustment. a 

b 

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ing everything stored inside them to adorn the house and honour God, it also set fire to buildings outside. What of the madness of Christians? Is it not more disgraceful, without being less harmful? Have we not learned from our forbears that Christian kings and leaders, have we not ourselves seen that bishops, have destroyed monasteries and abbeys, putting the monks to flight? We have seen church ornaments either sold or given to some other house. This is the ‘religion’ of our princes, to bear off the spoils from old monasteries into their own, and to confer on God what they have plundered from the wretched population. Is this a sacrifice pleasing unto God?a And what has become of Solomon’s words: He that offereth sacrifice of the goods of the poor, is as one that sacrificeth the son in the presence of his father (Ecclus. 34, 24)? Shall the needy be stripped naked while God takes pleasure in cloaks? Shall a poor man go hungry while God looks happily on? The treasures of churches are now for show, not for use. To continue the allegorical explanation: the ‘tabernacle’ of the church is this world, in which she fights for God, and in which, hoping for rewards in heaven, she labours over spiritual exercises. (‘Tabernacles’ are in the literal sense the tents of soldiers, which they use on active service.) The greed of this same world not only kills all that is fair in the tabernacle of the church, but also consumes all that remains of her in a fiery torrent of vices, when it weakens her faith in God, jeers at her hope of rewards, and enfeebles her charity towards neighbours. God aims His bow at the soul when He calls her back from evil by making her think of the judgement to come. He strengthens His right hand against her when He afflicts her with ills in the present. in the psalm it is said to Him (as I remarked earlier):b Thou hast shewn thy people hard things: thou hast made us drink the wine of sorrow. Thou hast given a warning to them that fear thee: that they may flee from before the bow (Ps. 59, 5-6). As to His right hand, He Himself says through the prophet: I will reign over you with a strong hand, and with a stretched out a  b 

Cf. Rom. 12, 1. See I, 5, 13; also III, 10-12, 11 below.

184

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4.

5.

II, 4 (2.-7.)

6.

7.

arm, and with fury poured out (Ezek. 20, 33). For fury seems to have been poured out for a miserable soul when God keeps her from evil by the arm of His mercy.a Concerning both we have in another psalm: Except you will be converted, he will brandish his sword: he hath bent his bow, and made it ready (Ps. 7, 13).b But surely He does these things to show in advance how stealthily the day of judgement creeps up, what bitter affliction it brings: if we are not converted, He will brandish His sword here and aim His bow there; here He will afflict us with all kind of misery, there He will plunge us into everlasting punishment. Woe to the soul that, when worn down by tribulation in this world, loses her patience, and makes future hardship follow close upon present calamity. The woe that ensues is being made ready for her when those noble virtues perish by which the soul had commended herself gratefully to her Creator.c Then the soul seethes in the flames of the vices by which she provokes the fire of God’s indignation. Unless she puts out that fire by repenting, she will be scorched both here, by the inextinguishable flame of conscience, and in the future, by the unending torment of hell. But the fire of a guilty mind does not give off a slow vapour; on a harsh and punishing pyre it eats away the breast that is aware of having done shameful things. If neither fear of God nor love of good drove us in the direction of the good, at least so fatal a dreadd ought to recall us from evil, even if what we believe about the fires of hell were no more than a fable. Hence Aristotle, finely and perhaps as well as a Christian might, laid down that we should a  William here comments on the passage of Ezekiel, before coming back to the bow and the hand (‘both’) of Lamentations. But his comment is strange. Does he mean that God has poured His fury away and does not direct it against the soul? Or does he think that the wrath is poured out and kept for later use? In any case, he seems to have forgotten that under the present lemma God ‘poured out his indignation’, with no implication of mercy (cf. § 6). b  In this quotation God’s hand is implied in the brandished sword. Cf. II, 4, 1 ‘arming His right hand with a sword’. c  The wording (and exact meaning) are uncertain (see CC CM 244, p. 325). I translate my highly uncertain conjecture (see p. 32). Nor is the start of the sentence secure. d  William means the dread of what is undergone by someone with a guilty conscience.

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look not to the beginning but to the end of pleasures. By showing them, he diminished them, made them subject to our minds, full of penitence, and warned that they should not be so greedily returned to.a But (alack!) how feeble and inconsistent is man, that he should see what needs to be done and yet does not acquire the strength to fulfil what he sees; that he should be aware that on fault will follow penance, yet will not or cannot abstain! Before an action, there contend in the mind desire and reason. In the action, reason departs; after the action follows grief. What then am I to say?b Do I accuse God, who orders me to resist, and thunders threats if I do not obey—yet does not vouchsafe the power to resist? Far be it from me! Rather I blame myself, for not acting well just because I neither fully say yes nor fully say no. If I fully wished good and fully rejected evil, I should not do things of which I should have to repent. Again, if I fully rejected good and fully wished evil, I should not repent of doing evil. I should therefore ask God, the merciful and omnipotent, who has by His grace given me the ability to wish for good in some way or other, to grant me in addition fully to desire it and fully to effect it.c 2, 5. The Lord is become as an enemy: he hath cast down Israel headlong, he hath cast down all the walls thereof; he hath destroyed all the fortifications; he hath multiplied in the daughter of Juda the afflicted, both men and women. has repeated the purport of the previous verses, in such a way that the points he had as it were thrown into a confused heap he now develops individually. There he describes the killing by bow and sword of all that was agreeable to behold, and the burning of everything that was left. Here he lists one by one the things that were destroyed in this way. First, using the general name ‘Israel’, he intimates that the whole nation rushed down the steep slope to death; next, specifying the afflicted, both men and a  Cf. Valerius Maximus 7, 2 ext. 11, not quite understood by William, who was in any case using a corrupt text: it is the minds, not the pleasures, that are made ‘full of penitence’. b  William seems still to be thinking of the personal problem hinted at in II, 3, 5. c  Cf. Rom. 6, 18.

186

8.

1.

II, 4 (7.) – II, 5 (4.)

2.

3.

4.

women, he repeatedly laments the corpses of both sexes filling the city streets. As though it did not seem enough for the inhabitants to be given over to destruction, he adds that houses were cast down too, meaning by ‘walls’ those girdling the city, by ‘fortifications’ her towers. History tells how these were so levelled that Gedaliah, whom Nebuzar-adan had made judge to rule the commons, found no place other than Mizpah where he could assemble the people, such as it was. He was an insignificant man of low birth, protected by his very lack of distinction, for the Chaldean king disdained to waste resources on him. So Gedaliah lived on there, ingloriously. But even in this obscurity he was discovered by the envy of Ishmael, and killed.a But that is for another time; now I shall pick up my thread. The same words may be connected to the person of the church, which for her sins the Lord either Himself casts down headlong or passively watches being cast down. It is then that everything in the way of cleansed minds, that used to be surveyed with clear gaze by the splendour that belongs to divinity, is totally plunged into the pit of filthy lust. It is then that the unassailable wall of God’s grace, which used to ring her around, is scattered and destroyed, a little at a time, by her wicked behaviour. It is then that the high citadels of the virtues, from which a church able to rely on God’s kindness used to look down on what lay below, fall into earthly filth and lick foul dirt. And, to sum up, as both sexes turn towards evil, the joy that united the church is changed into sorrow, and glory gives place to disgrace. Morally, we have a description of the sinful soul being cast down headlong in misery. She is rightly classed under the name ‘Israel’, for she was, as we know, made with the capacity to submit the body to her rule while herself striving ever higher. Here, she was designed to contemplate the sight of God through a glass darkly; in the future she was to contemplate Him face to face.b But very soon in the first man, and in us every day, she has been For all this see 4 Kgs. 25, 22-25. William seems to have invented the detail of Gedaliah being a judge, of low birth. b  Cf. 1 Cor. 13, 12. a 

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taken over by the affections of the body and has gone headlong, gradually becoming the servant of what she should have ruled. For just as there are certain steps of good (spoken of in connection with the church in the old translation of the psalm: In her steps shall God be known (Ps. 47, 4): that is, God’s grace will be plainly understood in her progress), so there are uneven steps of malice, down which the soul tumbles to an extreme of misery. ‘Rough’ is the right word for them; they may look like a slippery slope, but they greatly ‘roughen’ the soul after an action, ulcerating the conscience and pricking the memory. Wherefore the Lord is thought of ‘as an enemy’ of a soul which, because of her wickedness, He stabs as with the spear of penance. But there is surely need of great clemency, to ensure that in view of such punishment she does not go on to do more things requiring penitence. Yet she does not take a holiday from provoking the sweet Lord by her wickedness, and the wall of God’s grace is broken by her deserts, so that deprived of all protection she cannot find the strength to join battle with the foe. Those high virtues are destroyed, so that she would not be able, even if she tried, to avoid falling into the filthy slough of vice. The wall of the grace of God and the ability to ‘look at’ Goda both lie so afflicted in her that she desires only what is earthly, covets only what is brought low. The result is that, filled (so to speak) with the corpsesb of her past good qualities, she becomes cool towards God. If she should ever strive towards the good, she would fall back, her virtues of no avail. 2, 6. And he hath destroyed his tent as a garden; he hath thrown down his tabernacle. The Lord hath caused every feast and sabbath to be forgotten in Sion; he hath delivered up king and priest to reproach, in the indignation of his wrath.c God had been known only in Judaea,d where He had placed the city of Jerusalem like a tent, and in the city the temple like Cf. e.g. II, 1, 4 and 7. Cf. the streets conjured up by William in II, 5, 1. c  It is not clear what version of the last part of the verse William wished to present; ‘in indignatione furoris sui’ is suggested by II, 6, 2 (II, 434-435) below. d  Cf. Ps. 75, 2. a 

b 

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5.

1.

II, 5 (4.) – II, 6 (3.)

2.

3.

a tabernacle,a so that in them the Jews, warring for their faith, would fear no enemy assault so long as their fight was lawful. But after they abandoned their belief in Him and forgot the pact their fathers had made, He allowed their walls to be destroyed and the temple to be burnt by the enemy, who couldb now assail the city with a greed for money as keen as the greed youths feel for apples when they climb an orchard wall.c So in the psalm too: O God, the heathens are come into thy inheritance, they have defiled thy holy temple: they have made Jerusalem as a guard for fruit (Ps. 78, 1).d What is here called a tent is there called an inheritance; the temple there is the tabernacle here. But both prophetse compare city and temple to ‘a guard for fruit’,f to make us understand that in attacking the city the enemy lightened their labours and fed their hopes by their enthusiasm for loot, just as boisterous young men make light of the orchard guard in their hope of getting what they are after. The result was that for seventy yearsg the Jews forgot their feasts and sabbaths, thinking it enough to bewail the ruins of their pitiable city without delighting their minds with songs. Kings and priests too were objects of the enemy’s mockery: their name and office, once high and mighty, now caused offence and sorrow. And all this ‘in the indignation of the wrath’ of the Lord, because God, exasperated by their wickedness, for a short time ceased to be merciful and inflicted sore penalties on the faithless. Allegorically, ‘garden’ can be understood as equivalent to the Greek paradisus and the Hebrew Eden.h It was laid open to destruction and throwing down when God for their guilt drove a  In this literal exposition merely another word for a (military) ‘tent’ (cf. II, 299-300). Compare the military tone of the first part of the allegorical exposition in II, 6, 3. b  Because the temple as well as the walls was regarded as a guard (see below). c  William probably recalls the story in Augustine, Conf. 2, 4, 9 (‘nequissimi adulescentuli’). d  ‘As a place to keep fruit’ (Douai). But note §  2 ‘make light of the orchard guard’ (also § 3 ‘put there to guard it’, § 5 ‘the guard of the soul’). e  Jeremiah and David. f  A fudge: Jeremiah merely talks of a garden. g  See I, 12, 3 n. h  The MS gives ‘Eilen’.

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out the first inhabitants, who had been put there to guard it. The church too is reasonably called ‘tabernacle’ and ‘tent’, for under the shade of her faith everyone who fights loyally for God finds protection. This meaning is supported by what is said to her in the words of the prophet Isaiah: Enlarge the place of thy tent, and stretch out the skins of thy tabernacles, spare not (Isa. 54, 2). certainly fulfilled this precept when she overcame all terrors, traversed regions far removed from each other, and through the voices of preachers spread herself into all the earth.a But in the early days of the faith she suffered bitterly, and often came close to being destroyed and thrown down. In the heat of persecution the festive delight in preaching grew cold, though in the past its urgent message had soothed the souls of the holy by bringing, as it were, an agreeable moment of repose. Then a king would control the wayward impulses of the flesh, a priest would offer to God his own property and the reform of others. Now they were reproached by their own people, laughed at by outsiders: the more seriously they had taken their duties, the quicker they were swept away to destruction. Equally the familiar virtues of the church becomeb every day more restricted when kings and priests misuse their offices: the former polluting the breezes with their pleasures or oppressing everything with their tyrants’ frown, while the latter, grabbing at the heights of worldly glory in their aversion for a bishop’s serious mien, are nominally in charge of their subjects, but in fact do them no good.c The human soul, too, has room for all the virtues, like a garden of delightsd flourishing with every kind of flower. But, as I said,e boisterous young men assault the garden, rather to gratify themselves than to get any good out of it: they may pick some apples, but their pleasure is immediately sated and gives place to boredom. In the same way, the demons too make every effort to gird Cf. Ps. 18, 5. William changes to the present tense to condemn modern ‘everyday’ offences. c  There are untranslatable plays on fastigio/fastidio, presunt/prosunt (with the latter compare Reg. Ben. 64, 8 (p. 149). d  See I, 17, 13 n. e  II, 6, 2. a 

b 

190

4.

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II, 6 (3.-7.)

6.

7.

themselves to destroy the guard of the soul and force the angel himself who looks after her to yield to evil works. This service they give to their prince merely to satisfy their natural malevolence, with no expectation of profit. For what reward do they obtain by such labours, except perhaps to flatter themselves with the slight comfort that their perdition is accompanied by the perdition of man? It is after all characteristic of the envious, as I said earlier,a to find trouble the lighter to bear the more companions they have. They throw down the tent of God, and destroy His tabernacle, so that if Lord Jesus comes with His Father and wishes to set up His dwelling there, He disdains the foul abode and departs. He testifies that He would like to rest in the hearts of men, but finds no place because of the number of demons, when He says: The foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven nests: but the son of man hath not where to lay his head (Matt. 8, 20 = Luke 9, 58). Little foxes, cunning beasts, introduce the deceptive incitements of demons into the souls of men. To counter the demons, preachers are told in the Song of Songs: Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vines (S. of S. 2, 15) (though this can be understood of heretics). Birds, which because they fly in the air are customarily (though figuratively) called ‘birds of heaven’, represent flighty and frivolous things that these same enemies imprint on the minds of men. Hence in the parable of the sower: What fell by the way side, the birds of heaven ate it up (e.g. Matt. 13, 4). When the disciples asked what this meant, He solved the riddle, saying that the birds of heaven symbolised demons.b So in the sort of minds where the enemy make their lairs and build their nests, Christ has no place to lay His head, revered and dignified though it is. The result is that, where Christ has no rest, there is no holiday from vices, no sabbath of good works, and all the pleasant feasting, in which the mind with a good conscience takes delight, is turned into reproach. God exercises no royal jurisdiction there, and, so far as the merits of the wretched soul go, the sacrifice of the Priest who offered for us the ransom of His blood goes to waste. a  b 

I, 5, 8. See e.g. Matt. 13, 19. The traditional translation is of course ‘birds of the air’.

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2, 7. The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath cursed his sanctification;a he hath delivered the walls of the towers thereof into the hands of the enemy; they have made a noise in the house of the Lord as in the day of a solemn feast. The Lord first cast off the altar which Moses had established in the desert,b and which was for a long time at Shiloh.c He finallyd cast off the altar set up by Solomon in the temple at Jerusalem, because He was offended by the contumacious and untameable wickedness of her people. He cursed His sanctificatione because those who had alone of all nations been sanctified by the loyalty of their belief in Him are now execrated and shuddered at by all peoples: by infidels because of their perverse customs, by the faithful because of their consistent hatred for Christ. He hath delivered the walls of the towers of Jerusalem into the hands of the enemy: the Chaldeans, that is, and the Romans. For though the line of Macedonian kings hadf inflicted many misfortunes on the Jews thanks to the Antiochuses and Ptolemies, they [the Jews] never lamented their misfortunes except in their own cities, never except in their own homeland. But the Chaldeans and the Romans left them nothing: they occupied the walls and towers, and even burned the temple. Wherefore they made a great noise in celebration of their victory in the place where once the priests used to rejoice with loud musicg on God’s solemn occasions.

Douai renders ‘sanctuary’ (Gk. hagiasma); the Vulgate word (sanctificatio) translates the Gk. hagiasmos. See notes below on §§ 1, 4 and 5. The word is more awkwardly used with the genitives uirtutum (‘the virtues’) and bonorum (‘the good’) in § 5. b  Cf. 1 Chr. 21, 29. c  Cf. Jos. 18, 1. d  primo (‘first’) and postremo ‘finally’) contrast, but it is not clear if any intervening instances are implied. e  William clearly takes sanctificatio to mean ‘what He had sanctified’, i.e. the Jews (see n. on the lemma). f  The destruction by the Chaldeans of course preceded the Antiochuses and the Ptolemies. g  One might think of loud ritual invocations. But cf. GR 168, 2 (‘modulatos clamores’, ‘musical sounds’ produced by hydraulic organs). a 

192

1.

II, 7 (1.-4.)

2.

3.

4.

As for allegory, the altar of the Lord is the church, because the Host, the sacrifice that is acceptable to God, is never offered outside it. But we cannot understand these versesa to meanb that the Lord cast off or cursed her, unless maybe He cast her off, in the opinion of the faithless, when He allowed her to be afflicted by persecution and torn apart by slanderous words. At that time, when apostles and preachers (that is, the walls of churches) were delivered into the hands of enemies, the persecutors frisked about with festive joy at the ruin of the Lord’s house, pressing home their advantage with slanderous writings too. We can understand an equally close correspondence with the Lord Jesus Christ,c who is the altar beneath which the souls of the holy cry to God,d because, however great the sanctity in which the elect excel, they do not aspire to the height of one beneath whom, according to Job, they stoop that bear up the world (Job 9, 13). He is the altar from which the divine holocausts of virtues are taken, and also that on which they are sacrificed. For from Him all virtues sprout to embellish the holy, and from the holy they stream back to Him. The holy are altars, as in: Thy altars, O Lord of virtues (Ps. 83, 4). They are also called ‘light’; the Lord says to them: You are the light of the world (Matt. 5, 14). For the true light is that which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world.e therefore are both altars and light, not in their own natures but because they share in grace. It was, then, this altar that the Lord cast off (as He says in the psalm: But thou hast cast off and despised: thou hast delayed thy anointed (Ps. 88, 39)) when He did not listen to Him praying before the Passion that the hour might pass from Him,f but delayed the fulfilment of the prayer until the glory of the resurrection. Moreover, He Himself, who is not only the

Meaning the sentences making up verse 7; see I, 2, 1 n. The wording is not certain, but the sense is clear. Cf. esp. III, 22-24, 2. c  William here interprets allegorically of Christ (as often in Book 3) as well as of the church. d  Cf. Rev. 6, 9-10. e  Cf. John 1, 9. f  Cf. Mark 14, 35. a 

b 

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sanctifier but also sanctification itself,a was (in the words of the apostle) made sin for us,b so as to snatch us away from sin. He was also ‘accursed’, for cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree (Gal. 3, 13), so that He might free us from the curse of the law. Then ‘the walls of the towers thereof ’ (that is the apostles) were delivered into the hands of the Enemy to be tempted: for he desired to have them, that he might sift them all as wheat.c Now as to what follows, They have made a noise in the house of the Lord as in the day of a solemn feast, this will be understood by anyone who reflects on the kind of noise there was in the inner sanctum of the temple and the streets of the city at the time of the Lord’s Passion, what with the jeering cries of the priests and the groans of the citizens, especially the women. Morally, an afflicted spirit and a contrite heartd is the altar on which is offered to God the sacrifice that He beholds most vividly and accepts most gratefully. But God casts it off, and the Host is not welcome to Him, when mind and conscience are marred by the foulness of vice. The sanctification of Gode is also one who can say: Preserve my soul, for I am holy (Ps. 85, 2). In him God dwells as in a most beautiful temple, decked with the gems of all the virtues, as in: I will dwell in them, and walk among them (2 Cor. 6, 16). Also: Be ye holy, because I the Lord your God am holy (Lev. 19, 2). But he is cursed when he turns away from the sanctification of the virtues,f as in the psalm: He loved cursing, and it shall come unto him: and he would not have blessing, and it shall be far from him (Ps. 108, 18). He then who did not wish to participate in the sanctification of the good deserves to spend his life in the foulness of the bad. The towers of the soul are faith and hope: faith by which she now beholds Him who dwells in heaven, hope by which she is conThe rhetoric, and the parallel in 1 Cor. 1, 30, make the meaning clear (see note on the lemma). b  Cf. 2 Cor. 5, 21. c  Cf. Luke 22, 31. d  Cf. Ps. 50, 19. e  i.e. one who is sanctified by God (see n. on the lemma). f  i.e. ‘being made holy through the virtues he might practice’. a 

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1.

fident that she will in the future obtain rewards in heaven. The walls of the towers are charity, patience, humility, and the other virtues that bring it about that faith is not empty, nor hope audacious; for faith without works is deada and hope presumptuous. For a man has held correct belief in vain, and raised high his hope to no avail, if his life has been led in the misery of vice. So the walls and towers of the sinful soul are delivered into the hands of the enemy when all that used to serve the rule of God is handed over to the control of the Devil. The result is that when ceases to strive for virtue monstrous forms of vice make inarticulate noises in the mind. Thus Isaiah: The hairy ones shall dance there, and one shall cry out to another (cfr Isa. 13, 21 + 34, 14). For monsters shout lasciviously to each other when one vice leads on to another, and that to a third, and so on for ever. Over-drinking encourages drunkenness, drunkenness ushers in adultery, a man caught in flagrante falls into perjury and murder. The result is pitiable: shuttered by this racket, the ears of the heart let in nothing that conduces to salvation, and receive no healing from the scriptures. 2, 8. The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Sion; he hath stretched out his line, and hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying; the bulwark hath mourned, and the wall hath been destroyed. It is plain that the names of human emotions are ascribed to God for all His simplicityb just because without them His judgements could not be expressed or fittingly understood. Thus He is said to have purposed to destroy the wall to show with what hidden judgement and with what a weight of deliberation He brought such a mass of evil on wretched men. But He did not, as we do, go beyond the proper limit for punishment because He was influenced by anger; rather He stretched out the line of His counsel so that the hand of His discernment might cut back to Cf. Jas. 2, 26. i.e. (see Blaise s.v. simplicitas 1) His being one, with no parts (cf. II, 11, 7), unlike man, in whom emotions are, on the Platonic model, a feature of a divided self (see Prol., 9 n.). a 

b 

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the square whatever roamed superfluously outside the rulea of justice. It showed His clemency that He extended His punishment no further, His justice that He did not leave unpunished what needed to be destroyed. Now the bulwark is appropriately understood to be the guard mounted by angels, concerning whom the prophet prays: ‘Do thou protect this city, Lord, and let your angels guard its walls.’ b Their guard was expelled because of the sins of the townspeople, leaving the wall easy for invaders to break down. So the wall was destroyed because its guards had fled, and the guards were vexed both at the ruin of such vast structures and, as I am more inclined to assert, at the killing involved. For just as they are said to rejoice for one sinner that doth penance,c so they are not absurdly thought to be touched by some small measure of disquieting sorrow at the loss of those whom they had hoped to have as allies. This sequence of words can also be taken as referring to the church, which is allegorically Sion. For the line of divine punishment is stretched out against her, so that the wall is destroyed, when as a result of sins preachers either say farewell to life, snatched away by a premature demise, or sate the madness of their persecutors by the agonising torments they undergo. By the fearful but just judgement of God, it comes about that His severity never fails until He removes all faults. Rightly so. For the church is disturbed externally by the calamity of such monstrous punishments less than she is stained internally by the foulness of vice. Hence our Sion, as whose saviour, according to Isaiah,d a bulwark is set, is destroyed when God’s help is taken away from her. Not that His aid is ever entirely and utterly removed, for otherwise she could not, in the absence of divine protection, continue to exist; rather, it appears to be withdrawn for a while, until she is renewed in strength by tears of penitence. This is why the bulwark of the recideret (‘cut back’) suggests that both norma (‘the square’) and regula (‘the rule’) carry the image of a carpenter at work. b  Not traced. The words may come from some prayer or antiphon: not, certainly, from the Bible. c  Cf. Luke 15, 7 and 10. d  Cf. Isa. 26, 1. a 

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3.

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II, 8 (1.-5.)

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church, that is the Lord our Saviour, is said to have mourned, because He teaches the holiest men in the church to mourn in view of such miseries. For according to the apostle too, the Spirit asketh for us with unspeakable groanings (Rom. 8, 26), because it inspires in us healthfula groans for our sins. For individual members grieve for the body as a whole, and demand a remedy from the head itself. The head is said quite appropriately to join in the tears of the holy, just as it suffers with their sufferings.b I am telling the truth when I sayc that the Lord Himself, already arrived in heaven, used these words to rebuke the wolf that was gnawing at the members of the church on earth: Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? (Acts 9, 4). Before the Passion, too, when He was as it were saying the funeral rites for a city that was to be destroyed because of the sins of its inhabitants, He did not refuse the pious duty of tears,d showing that there are many to be lamented, those through whose stubbornness He who rules and shakes all things by His nod was Himself shaken into pouring out tears. Yet, because they had made themselves unworthy of such a bulwark, the walls too were destroyed, and the angels who protected them deserted the altars and sanctuaries, and all departed. Morally, one should take the principal wall of the soul to be charity, the walls the other virtues, the bulwark faith. For it is faith that offers itself as the first line of defence against the enemies of the soul, to foil them by delay or ward them off with courage. For because without faith it is impossible to please God,e the virtues form a wall that is welcome to God when they do not fall away from soundness of faith. Again, because faith alone without virtues is an empty showf rather than a bringer of any good, it is necessary that on faith good works should follow, so that, as the fortifications are constantly renewed, the enemy panics, wavers, and takes to his heels, despairing of ever capturi.e. salvation-bringing. Cf. also III, 25-28, 3 n. Cf. 1 Cor. 12, 26. c  This interpretation coincides with that of Bede, In Act. ad loc. (p. 41, 10-11). d  Cf. Luke 19, 41-44 (partly quoted at I, 3, 8). e  Cf. Hebr. 11, 6. f  The exact wording is uncertain. a 

b 

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ing the city. Soa it often happens that the soul descends from the look-out place of the virtues and rolls down to the depths. God purposes to destroy her wall when He sees her fall away from the virtues. He therefore brandishes His wrath; but stretching out the line of counsel He delays passing sentence. For in His clemency He ‘goes down’ in deliberation (as He did in the case of Sodom),b to see whether she has fully acted upon the ‘cry’ of her thoughts. He does not altogether condemn the soul, except when she proceeds from perverse thoughts to action because she has grown accustomed to misery,c and so robs herself of forgiveness. Hence it is said that the Lord does not withdraw His hand from destroying when He allows the soul to misuse free will and go headlong into an extreme of evil. So once the walls of the soul are destroyed only faith survives to mourn; it knows for what deep punishment the sinful soul is heading if she continues on her stubborn course, seeing that now, in the depth of evils, she ‘contemneth’.d But kindest Jesus, lover of men, open on her the eyes of your mercy, and extricate her from the filth of pleasures. Yours, Lord, yours are absolutely all the good things she has. She possesses faith, the seal of all good things, only because your spirit breathes it into her. Why then will you allow all the gifts of your grace to perish because she is so pitifully stubborn? Long ago, when she lay far from knowledge of you and roamed among the cults of demons, you pitied her in her wanderings, and put on mane in order to draw her to salvation. You were humbled so that you might raise her up. You suffered that revered countenance to be assailed by the unclean spittle of wicked men,f in order to cleanse her. Now, when she knows you by faith, or rather when she is known ergo (‘so’) may be corrupt. If not, the logic is somewhat elliptical. Cf. Gen. 18, 21. There God descends to see if the city has been acting as the ‘cry’ (clamor), i.e. report, suggests. In William’s context, God comes down in a more merciful frame of mind, to determine whether the Church has in fact acted as her ‘clamorous’ thoughts threatened she might. The next sentence makes the point clearer. c  i.e. to the misery caused by the habit of sinning. d  Cf. Prov. 18, 3. e  i.e. ‘clothed’ yourself in human flesh. f  Cf. Matt. 27, 30. a 

b 

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II, 8 (5.) – II, 9 (2.)

1.

2.

to you through faith, will you shut up the bowels of your mercy upon her?a Do not, I beg you, merciful Father, do not forget the price you paid with your blood, lest that precious stream should have flowed in vain. Exalt mercy above judgement,b for if thou, O Lord, wilt mark iniquities: Lord, who shall stand it? (Ps. 129, 3). You know our make-up, for you made it. You know the miseries of mortal men, which you experienced without sinning. Enter not then into judgement with man,c but, as is your custom, direct your gaze along the path of clemency. 2, 9. Her gates are fixed in the ground, he hath destroyed and broken her bars; her kings and her princes are among the Gentiles; for the law is no more, and her prophets have found no vision from the Lord. If you take this in the straightforward historical sense, it seems to mean that after breaking the bars (that is, the fastenings of the gates) He also violently dislodged the gates themselves and dashed them to the ground, made the kings and princes a fable among the Gentiles, burned the Law and reduced it to nothing, by all this din diverting the prophets from their leisured concentration on the Lord. If you pry more exactly into the inner meaning, you will understand by ‘gates’ the priests, by ‘bars’ the kings. For through the priests was gained entrance to the knowledge of God, while with the barrier of their strength the kings, like bars, protected the priests and people. But then the strength of the kings had been broken, and the previous holiness of the priests fixed in the filth of the earth by the glue of desire. Her kings and princes are among the Gentiles: a repetition, clearly indicating in non-metaphorical language what he had previously veiled in words transferred from elsewhere. ‘Among the Gentiles’ either means that they were dispersed among the nations, or that they had been brought over to the ways of the heathen by a disgraceful conversion. The latter is suggested by what follows: observance of the Law had perished, Cf. Luke 1, 78; Col. 3, 12. For ‘shutting the bowels’ cf. 1 John 3, 17. Cf. Jas. 2, 13. c  Cf. Ps. 142, 2. a 

b 

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and false prophets found no vision from the Lord, being carried away instead by the influence of the Devil. Read the biting threats by which this prophet, and Ezekiel no less, marked out the follies of those who produced clouds of their own fantasies to mislead the vulgar. Allegorically, the ‘gates’ of the church are the priests, for it is through their learning that knowledge of eternal salvation is unlocked.a They are the ‘bars’, for by them entrance to the church is forbidden to the guilty and criminal. They are ‘kings’, when they control illicit appetites and do not serve the pleasures of the flesh. They are ‘princes’, when they rule over the rest by the excellence of their life just as they surpass them in rank. This was true in the past. But now they have fixed their minds in the earth: they strive for earthly things, think earthly thoughts; and because of this their dignity is broken and destroyed among the Gentiles. Wherefore, as the blessed Gregory said: ‘When a man’s life is despised, it is inevitable that his preaching too is scorned.’ b There is therefore no law in their mouths, for they do not care to preach , none in their minds, for they do not act . Nor do they find vision from the Lord, for in so far as they understand the holy scriptures, it is because man has handed knowledge down to them, not because God has inspired them. They do not deserve to have a foretaste of joys to come, for they misuse their honours in the present. According to the moral sense, the ‘gates’ of the soul are the bodily senses, through which pleasures burst tumultuously from outside into her inmost parts. The ‘bolts’ are the gifts of God’s grace, by which the soul is made strong enough to resist vice. Grace rules her, so that she does not fall into evil; grace is lord over her, so that she excels in good. But (alas!) it is only very rarely that the soul is in accord with grace her helper. Not merely does she cast on earthly things the attention of the senses that serve her: she fixes it in them violently. It is then that, thanks to her perversity, grace fails in a sinful soul, though it never weakens in a  b 

Cf. Gregory the Great, Moral. 33, 26 (p. 1713) (preachers). Gregory the Great, In evang. 12, 1.

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II, 9 (2.) – II, 10 (1.)

5.

1.

those who deserve it and work with it. Among the Gentiles: that is, the throngs of vices that oppress the soul, barring access to God’s grace. What profit, then, for a sinner if he believes in the correct faith? None, to be sure, and perhaps a loss. For it is better not to recognise the way of truth than to go backwards after recognising it. Knowledge of the law and the prophets is not useful but harmful to a man when he uses them not to find the grace of God but to follow the example of the Devil. Hence the words of the apostle James: Thou believest that there is one God. Thou dost well: the devils also believe and tremble (Jas. 2, 19). ‘Belief’ on the Devil’s part, therefore, does not gain him grace, but increases a pride that merits condemnation. But a man who sins is more hideous than the Devil: the Devil trembles before the power of God, but the sinner in his proud insolence disobeys orders, and does not shrink from immersing himself in the filth of vice. But it is time his swelling went down, time he tried to get to his feet. So in the meantime, while he can still obtain a good penitence, let him cry from deep down within him, let him say with all his heart: Draw me out of the mire, Lord, that I may not stick fast: deliver me from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters (Ps. 68, 15). 2, 10. The ancients have sat upon the ground, they have held their peace. The daughters of Sion have sprinkled their heads with dust. The virgins of Jerusalem are girded with haircloth; the virgins of Juda hang down their heads to the ground. The historical meaning is obvious. The ancients, whose age made them both respected and wise in counsel, lost the one attribute because of the enemy’s violence, and neglected the other, dazed as they were by the scale of the disaster. For what room was there for respect when the sword raged at everyone indiscriminately? How could counsel enter in when fear of death prevailed over deployment of the powers of the mind? In like manner, the softer sex, shattered by the indignities suffered by ‘the ancients’ and by despair for their own lot, especially if nature made them delicate or age weak, neglected nothing that might make their grief apparent: disordering their luxurious clothes, wearing away their skin on rougher material, dirtying their curly hair with ashes, and (to

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add weight to their other ills) never lifting their spirits with the hope of anything better to come. It should be noted that, as the prophet repeats the same idea three times (‘daughters of Sion’, ‘virgins of Jerusalem’, ‘virgins of Juda’), the grief builds up and the rhetorical tone of the expression increases. Mystically, the ancients of the church are the preachers, who should be both mature in deed and weighty in counsel. But they are here lamented because they not merely lapse from the good: they also persist in evil. For by sitting on the ground (I think) is signified persistence in evil, bearing in mind that there are three types of sin, of thought, action and custom.a The man who is free of these is pronounced happy by the first verse of the Psalter: Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence (Ps. 1, 1). If one goes, one passes from one place to another; similarly, one who ponders whether to sin is divided in his thoughts. But standing is uncertain and undecided: one who falls into sin once or twice is still balancing his options, whether he should remain in sin. But just as one who sits indicates that he will continue in that position, so pleasure in a fault has it in mind to go on practising it and failing to repent. People like this not unreasonably ‘hold their peace’: they do not dare to say what they know within them. Wherefore it is not surprising if the souls of the rest of the faithful, once so holy, slide into evil when they cannot profit by the example of their superiors and are made worse by their silence. One thing is expressed in three ways: ‘daughters of Sion’ stands for contemplation of the vision of God, ‘virgins of Jerusalem’ for the vision of eternal peace, ‘virgins of Juda’ for confession of the correct faith.b But while (as I said)c they sprinkle their heads (that is, the ruling element in the mind) with filthy dust, they are ‘girded with haircloth’ because the goads of sins penetrate their breasts and make their consciences sore. Add to this the lamentable risk Cf. Prol., 10 where Ps. 1, 1 is interpreted rather differently. Cf. II, 1, 7 (Sion); I, 17, 8 (Jerusalem); I, 3, 4 (Judah). c  Cf. II, 10, 1. a 

b 

202

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3.

II, 10 (1.-5.)

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5.

that they rarely or never trouble to shake off their torpor and raise their attention to the commandments of God. Far therefore are these daughters away from the holiness of those to whom the bride in the Song of Songs says: I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him that I am sick of love (S. of S. 5, 8). For those daughters are the blessed souls who enjoy the peace of heaven, those whom we every day canvass with heartfelt prayers to carry our sighs to the altars on high. But these still dwell in this mortal life, to be praised more for the purity of their faith than for any worthy deed they have done.a Morally, the ‘ancients’ of our souls are the prudent and foreseeing thoughts that, as it were, fall away from the serious maturity of old age when they lose the spirit of counsel and wisdom and pursue a reputation for empty glory. Though their consciences make a confused noise within them, yet externally they keep silent, not joining in the health-giving clamour of confession. Hence the psalm says: Because I was silent my bones grew old; whilst I cried out all the day long (Ps. 31, 3), as much as to say: Although internally the noise and disquiet of vice have a long story to tell, yet because externally I was silent in confessing my sins, the solider and fresher virtues of my soul yielded weakly to habit. Wherefore, with counsel lost and virtues impaired, our souls, covered with the bristles of sins and intent on the dirt of ashes, do not think of getting to their feet, do not contemplate repentance. They are so used to the mass of earth weighing them down that now they are even tempted by despair. Meantime, however, though they have lost the reality, they still retain the prestigious name, ‘daughters of Jerusalem’,b so that, reminded by so grand a title, they understand where they should aim to go. Let them therefore unlearn their slavery to one who is no lawful lord but a tyrant, and pass over to adoptionc by a most merciful Father. For they are ‘bought with a great price’; let them then ‘glorify and bear God’ in their body.d But if they lack confiA strange remark. A casual merging of ‘daughters of Sion’ and ‘virgins of Jerusalem’. c  Cf. II, 2, 2 (Eph. 1, 5). d  Cf. 1 Cor. 6, 20. a 

b 

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dence in their own powers, let them call to their aid those daughters of Jerusalem who now and forever hold by inheritance the kingdom of which faith and hope give us a guarantee.a They find the Beloved more freely,b love Him more sweetly, embrace Him with more confidence. Therefore let them ensure by their prayers to Him that we may be sick healthfully of love for Him, and die ‘livingly’c to the desires of the world. And may they announce to Him that we have been renewed for good, so that in His mercy He may satisfy our desire with good things.d 2, 11. My eyes have failed with weeping, my bowels are troubled; my liver is poured out upon the earth for the destruction of the daughter of my people, when the children and the sucklings fainted away in the streets of the city. Not only Jeremiah, who is a lover of his brethren, and of the people of Israel (2 Macc. 15, 14), according to the dream of Maccabaeus, but anyone, stony-hearted, would weary his eyes with tears for the confusion and misery afflicting a great people once so dear to God. Further, when he says his liver is poured out upon the earth, he seems to me to mean that he has lost all appetite for food in the intensity of his grief. For the liver, which we more usually call epar in the case of a man,e ‘boils down’ with its heat food that is poured into the stomach, and distributes it through the appropriate parts of the body. When he says it is poured out upon the earth, that is as if to say that it grew cold through loss of heat and so became unable to ‘cook’ food. But how could there be any limit to the increase of misery when sucklingsf eager only for the breast were abandoned in the streets, where, deprived of the care of anyone to nurse them, they gasped away their

This seems to be the sense, but oppignero is used oddly in the passive. Cf. S. of S. 5, 8, cited in § 3. c  uitaliter: a paradox, like healthful sickness. d  Cf. Ps. 102, 5. e  An odd remark. iecur is used of the liver of both men and animals; so too is the Greek (see ODML s.v. hepar). f  See I, 8, 2 n. a 

b 

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II, 10 (5.) – II, 11 (3.)

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3.

unlucky little souls, breathing out into the air the light they had only just begun to drink in?a Allegorically, the failing of eyes is sometimes used in a good sense, as when the psalmist says to God: My eyes have failed for thy word (Ps. 118, 82). In that passage there is a praiseworthy failing in evil, and a fortunate advance towards the good.b For the more someone mortifies himself to the vices and desires of the world, the more keenly he focuses the eye of his mind on life in heaven. But in the present passage you should take the words straightforwardly: the ‘eyes’ of holy church are excellent men, outstanding for learning and works. They, keen of sight (as it were) in both eyes, can foresee what will avail, and evade what will harm. The Bridegroom, speaking to the church in the Song of Songs, says of them: Thy eyes are the eyes of doves, which sit beside the streams of waters (S. of S. 1, 14 = 4, 1 + 5, 12). For, as I said earlier,c doves sit on river banks so that they can fly away quickly to escape danger: the water acts as a mirror, in which they can see in advance the shadow of predators. In the same way, teachers concentrate on drinking down the streams of the scriptures in order to foresee for their own sake the stratagems of the cunning foe, but also to teach that they must be foreseen by their inferiors. Yet very often, either because of their own lapses or because of the wickedness of their subjects, they waste away in lamentable grief, saying with the psalmist: My eyes have failed for thy word (Ps. 118, 82). Also: Thou wilt feed us with the bread of tears: and give us for our drink tears in measure (Ps. 79, 6).d For, having renounced the comfort of carnal pleasures, they find rest only in tears, because, just as bread is man’s staple diet, so tears of compunction are their remedy for alle sorrows.

The imagery is confused. But note Vergil, Georg. 2, 340 ‘cum primae lucem pecudes hausere’ (‘virtually unique’: R. F. Thomas ad loc.). b  William seems to take the same words in a ‘bad’ sense in § 3. c  I, 16, 4 (with n.). d  The words are clearly a question in the Vulgate, but MS B does not mark them as such. So too in II, 18, 3; V, 4, 3. e  There is an allusion to the etymology of panis given at I, 11, 4. a 

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The church goes on to say why her eyes have failed with weeping: My bowels are troubled; my liver is poured out upon the earth. What is meant by the ‘bowels’ of the church if not the mass of the people, soft in faith and works, distinguished by a readier softness in pleasures, and with more stinking dregs of vices clinging to them? What is betokened by the ‘liver’, which by virtue of its heat boils down the juices in food and divides them among all the limbs, if not rich men, who accumulate wealth by their quick wits and are glad to display their generosity by giving it to others? But the church laments the lapses of the multitude when she sees it disturbed in the faith, and loathes the tight fists of rich men if they forget their liberality of old: they may continue the search for earthly gain with undiminisheda enthusiasm, but they earmark the proceeds for their own bellies and nothing else. The result is that the faint in faith (these are, I reckon, the people meant by ‘daughters’ and ‘children’ and ‘sucklings’) take serious offence. For they are astonished and almost despairing when they see the haughty rich rejoicing in piles of money, bodily health, numerous offspring: men who have abandoned God and gaze longingly on this world. Concerns of this kind are for the foolish. If they were not faint believers, they would not worry about the fleeting joys of such plutocrats; they would think instead of the everlasting punishments that await them. Of this kind was the man who said: But my feet were almost moved; my steps had wellnigh slipped. Because I had a zeal on occasion of the wicked, seeing the prosperity of sinners (Ps. 72, 2-3), and the rest of what the psalm says in the role of those who are scandalised. They are also said—and rightly—to lie in the streets, for, corrupted by the example of evil men, they eagerly take the wide and broad way that leads to death, not striving to enter by the narrow gate, which leads to life.b What of the soul? Does not she too have her eyes and bowels and liver and the rest? Yes, she certainly does, though figuratively, not literally. Her ‘eye’ is the intellect, which gives her a keen understanding of what to do. The ‘liver’ is the reason, by whose lively a  b 

The word effuso (‘poured out’) picks up effusum in the lemma. Cf. Matt. 7, 13-14; Luke 13, 24.

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II, 11 (4.) – II, 12 (1.)

7.

1.

activity she (as it were) digests what the intellect transmits to her in a raw state, and discerns what should be done from what should not. The resta are to be taken as representing the soul’s emotions: the ‘bowels’ standing for the filth of vice, or ‘daughters’ for the softness of pleasure, or ‘children’ and ‘sucklings’ for the weakness of their knowledge. But the eye ‘fails’ when it darkens itself with earthly clouds, concentrating on cares that are really to be wept for, and that lead to eternal weeping. The liver is ‘poured out upon the earth’ when reason, ceasing to concern itself with the good life, comes to confusion in its search for worldly profit. The bowels are ‘troubled’ when the conscience is in an uproar, at variance within and uncertain how to act. The daughter is ‘destroyed’ when after long and tortuous delays is overcome by temptation and grows weak. The child and the suckling ‘lie’ when, lacking the word of God and sustenance from heaven, she fosters the habit of evil. And this happens ‘in the streets’, because she is separated into many parts and scarcely ever returns to the simple unity of God.b And it often happens that when she sees herself in such a plight she does at least come to her senses and lament, shedding copious tears to solace her grief. Happy indeed, happy would she be if the tears she began to weep in fear of punishment or hope of forgiveness, she continued to shed out of love for justice or longing for glory! Happy to be on active service, happy to be advancing victory! 2, 12. They said to their mothers: Where is corn and wine? when they fainted away as the wounded in the streets of the city: when they breathed out their souls in the bosoms of their mothers. This verse links with the end of the preceding one, and coheres with it both allegorically and historically. That verse tells of the fainting of the wretched in the streets, while this one acquaints us in addition with the complaints of the dying. Over the children and sucklings abandoned out of doors by the barbarous enemy, a  That is, the other items mentioned in the lemma. The wording of the Latin is unretrievable. b  William means: ‘returns to God [cf. e.g. § 5; V, 22, 1], who is one, as opposed to men, who are divided’ (see II, 8, 1 n.).

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conscientious mothers kept their anxious guard. No fear could prevent crowds of them doing this sweet service; they were to be pitied for a double agony, the hunger common to all and the death of their children. Nor did the laments of the wretched allow any check on their grief, for they ever cried aloud for wine and corn. These two things in particular keep body and soul together; < the children asked for them> either because they are easy to provide or because in such a dangerous famine there could be no yearning for luxurious food.a But the groans of the captivesb were vain. The food they could not find was denied them, and, a sight for all to pity, they laid down their souls in the bosoms of their mothers: complaint and life were snuffed out together. But a quite different mystical meaning can be felt, figuring the church. These children and sucklings follow in the footsteps of the young man in the Gospel;c with no gratitude for their Father’s kindness, they stray away from God through the streets and broad spaces of error. For the welcomingd father is our God; all crime is foreign to Him, and those who abandon Him go off into exile far away. There they serve the lord of swine, that is, the Devil, author of all kinds of foulness. But thanks be to God the merciful, who loves men, and who formed our natures in such a way that, however stubborn and active we may be in evil, we can never fully forget His kindnesses! So these people, though far removed from God, are not altogether unmindful of Him, and demand corn and wine from their mothers. What they want, of course, is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, the bread that strengthens man’s heart and the wine that cheers it.e For these two, when by the ritual words they pass over into our Lord’s body, in fact work our salvation, and figuratively signify unity. For just as bread is made out of many grains and wine is The Latin as it stands is very elliptical, and some words may have dropped out. An odd way of referring to the starving children. But cf. II, 19, 3. c  Luke 15, 11-32. d  This seems to be the sense. There may be some play between ingrati and gratissimus. e  Cf. Ps. 103, 15. a 

b 

208

2.

3.

II, 12 (1.-5.)

4.

5.

pressed from many grapes, so diverse peoples flow together into the church, that is the body of our Saviour. The young man I mentioned was hungry for a large quantity of this bread; by now tired of husks, he kept saying: How many hired servants in my father’s house abound with bread, and I here perish with hunger! (Luke 15, 17). He uses ‘bread’ in the plural, though there is only one body of Christ, just as we speak of many different churches though there is a single catholic church throughout the world. This bread the wretched think they should ask from their mothers, that is from the enticements of carnal pleasure, for they are attached to their desires for them as though to their mother’s breasts: no doubt they imagine they can make use of the world and enjoy God too. So finding their desire come to naught, they faint in the very bosom of pleasure; their spirit goes out to be punished and their flesh goes away to become earth. Better advised was that young man, who knew that such thingsa are to be asked from ‘the Father of lights’ b—nor was he lazy in asking. Back he came, and uttered words that he had polished by long rehearsal:c Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee (Luke 15, 21), and the rest. Just because he was wise enough to know in whose gift such things were, and was quick to turn to penitence, he was found worthy not only of the washing away of sins and the seal of faith, but also of shoesd for preaching the Gospel. What I have shaped into an allegory of the church can, I think, be aptly understood of the sinful soul. Since according to the apostle we are all one body in Christ, and every one members one of another (Rom. 12, 5), what I have said can be applied generally to individuals and individually to everybody. But beware, my soul, the worldly enticements that suckle you with the allurements of pitiful pleasures—or (to put it better) wound you with them. Beware the streets of this world, forked into blocked byways of error: wide As bread, corn, wine. So too below. The son asks for bread (at least in his thoughts at v. 17), and is given not only food but a ring (the ‘seal of faith’) and perhaps (though this is not stated in the Bible) a bath (‘the washing way of sins’). b  Cf. Jas. 1, 17. c  He had ‘rehearsed’ the words in v. 18. d  Cf. Luke 15, 22. a 

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with the inventions of pleasure, or filthy with the mire of uncleanness, or dusty with confusing cares. Return to the most merciful Father, who wonderfully created you, and will mercifully give you a new form. Roll away then from the bosoms of evil mothers, and make a bid for liberty at last! will establish you with corn, that is the stability of faith, and wine, that is the good cheer of perpetual joy. With these things that good old man,a his eyes blind to the world outside but unimpaired and clear within, had endowed his son,b supplanter of vices,c saying: I have established him with corn and wine (Gen. 27, 37). I should say more of the moral meaning if I had not already constructed such a laborious explanation on these lines to supply the allegory for the church. 2, 13. To what shall I compare thee, or to what shall I liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? To what shall I equal thee, and comfort thee, O daughter of Sion? Great as the sea is thy destruction; who shall heal thee? In lamenting the city’s ruin, Jeremiah has exhausted his grief in many different ways. Now he addresses the city herself directly: To what shall I compare or liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? In these words he compassionately bewails the fall not only of his nation but of our church and the human soul too. For the nation of which had once been said: O how good are thy houses (that is, your tabernacles, that is, like paradise) near the river Jordan, as cedars by the waterside,d and the city of which had been said: Glorious things are said of thee, O city of God (Ps. 86, 3), had now been reduced to such a plight that, being almost non-existent, she could be compared to nothing. As much as her ancestors’ feats had in the past made her most powerful among all kingdoms, just as much now, thanks to her own crimes, she was lowest of the low.

Isaac. Jacob. c  Cf. I, 17, 8 n. d  Freely based on Num. 24, 5-6 (in its Old Latin version). a 

b 

210

1.

II, 12 (5.) – II, 13 (4.)

2.

3.

4.

In the same way,a that according to the apostle is the house of the living God (1 Tim. 3, 15), and according to Revelations the bride and wife of the Lamb,b is brought low by the errors of wicked citizens, just as she is excellently raised up by the behaviour of the good. Equally, the soul is the abode of wisdom and its dwelling, as Wisdom Himself says: If anyone love me, my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him (John 14, 23), and through Solomon: I wisdom dwell in counsel, and am present in learned thoughts (Prov. 8, 12). But when she spurns the counsel to live an upright life and befouls herself with impieties, of such a one Solomon makes the same pronouncement: Wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins (Wisd. 1, 4). The triple sense of these words can therefore be brought summarily under one head as a cure for pride. Wherefore of all, as of individuals, let it be said: To what shall I compare thee or liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? To what shall I equal thee, and comfort thee, O daughter of Sion? The verbal repetition shows the prophet’s worry that he can find no fitting comparison for this misery. No words can express his indignation. For what can be more unfittingc than that the nation, falling away from its ancestral virtue, should so provoke God that He allowed it to be virtually annihilated? What wickedness that in the church souls, as a group or singly, should abandon the lofty look-out place for the contemplation of God,d and head towards death! To such persons the psalm says: I have said: You are gods and all of you the sons of the most High. But you like men shall die: and shall fall like one of the princes (Ps. 81, 6-7). For some, in the first flush of faith and conversion, cleave to God’s commandments and as it were approach His The allegory follows very closely (despite the paragraphing) on the last words of the previous section concerning the city of Jerusalem. Hence the use of ciuium (‘citizens’). b  Cf. Rev. 21, 9. c  There is a play on the root indign- (‘more of an indignity’ is not quite right in English here). Cf. III, 79-81. d  Cf. I, 4, 2. a 

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Being. But later, plunging into diverse shameful actions, they incur the stain of mortal corruption. Thus, because they move from lofty being to non-being,a they are rightly thought unworthy of comparison to something that exists. Unless, maybe, they are to be compared to their model, the prince of all the wicked: who, not content with the happiness he was given, swelled up against Him who bestowed that gift, and, in his attempt to attain a place as high as God’s, fell down into hell with his compeers.b To him therefore let them be compared, because next comes: Great as the sea is thy destruction. The sea indeed never rests from its seething, but batters itself with the eddies of its hostile waves. In the same way, the Devil and his followers never reconcile themselves to the peace of the virtues, but amid the tumult of evil grow strong themselves and drive others to increase as much. That is why their destruction is compared to the waves of the sea: they are continually tossed on to the wrecks of the vices,c and never win through to a friendly berth on the shore. But since souls that are despaired of are very rarely saved, the prophet adds: Who shall heal thee? He says ‘Who?’ not because it is impossible but because it is difficult: bothd (that is) for men, but neither for God. God can bring them help and healing, and He is willing to, if souls turn towards Him from whom they have turned away.e He Himself gives man instructions against sinning; He Himself provides the sinner with penitence, the remedy against despair. He is just in pressing His orders upon us, for He hastens ahead to help us. He is right to invite us to obey Him, for to the obedient, in His kindness, He promises glory. 2, 14. Thy prophets have seen false and foolish things for thee, and they have not laid open thy iniquity, to excite thee to penance; but they have seen for thee false revelations and banishments. Cf. II, 13, 1 (II, 992). compares picks up the idea of comparison. Dr Sønnesyn points out that there is a close resemblance to arguments central to Anselm’s De casu diaboli. c  In effect, vices that wreck them. d  i.e. both impossible and difficult. e  For this play on words cf. e.g. I, 16, 8 (I, 2554), I, 18, 11 (I, 2848-2849). a 

b 

212

5.

1.

II, 13 (4.) – II, 14 (3.)

2.

3.

What madness on the part of fanatic seers, who to win popular favour pretended to see what they had not seen! Less to be wondered at, then, the credulity of the commons, who, so long as they were given prophecies to their liking, were (as often happens in mortal affairs) glad to go along with them. And so, as the same prophet says earlier on in his book,a they made up dreams for themselves, out of excessive love for renewing their country; what they had long mulled over during the day, came to them at night in the form of many a fantasy. But there he convicts both those who shaped a lie and those who believed in vain things: the one group for making false assertions, the other for being stupid enough to believe them. Here, however, he indirectly taxes the hearers with silly credulity, for not turning their ears away from men they had often found to be deceivers: it being not just imprudent, but positively reckless and baneful, to take notice of people who do not hesitate to launch a lie, not by a slip of the tongue but after due deliberation. But as for those responsible for the falsehoods, he abuses them quite openly, saying both that they saw false things and that they tried to win good will by going easy on the people’s crimes. Further, by ‘revelations’ [assumptiones] is meant the making of heavier threats, by ‘banishments’ their lightening. (For instance, where our translatorb talks in Isaiahc of the ‘burden’ of Babylon and Damascus and other cities, others have rendered the word as ‘revelation’ [assumptio].) By these two words, then, Jeremiah indicates that false prophets did not scruple to apportion the threat of divine vengeance according to the degree of hate or favour they felt for anyone they wished. The church too has its false prophets, I mean heretics and schismatics, who stitch up the minds of the uneducated with the nets of wicked opinions and the hooks of argumentation, in such a way that they can by no effort extricate themselves from wickedness once it has entered their minds. She also has false priests, who to take care of their bellies sell their grace to sinners; who a  Cf. Jer. 5, 31; 23, 25-28. ‘They’ refers to such prophets. ‘Renewing’ means ‘improving’ (cf. III, 4-6, 4; Eph. 4, 23). b  i.e. Jerome, as responsible for the Vulgate. c  Cf. 13, 1; 17, 1; and e.g. 23, 1.

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to fill their purses pretend that they are unaware of the faults of their subjects; who, finally, connive at the sins of others so as to sin more freely themselves, and, according as they feel love or hate for anyone, shorten or lengthen the time of penance. They daub the wall without tempering,a when they attempt to bring the hard hearts of the impenitent into union with the body of the church without the remedy of penance. But false indeed is what they intend, false what they do, because the further one departs from the light of truth, which is God,b the further one falls away into the darkness of falsehood. Further, the false prophets of the soul are the outer senses, which tempt to all evil and show it up, and through which the soul desires both foolish and false things: foolish as being empty and fleeting, false because they cannot furnish the blessedness they claim falsely that they provide. For all men seek for blessedness and try to attain it, however different the route, however diverse their intentions and plans.c But when the reprobate aim to take hold of it amid things fleeting, they fail of their purpose. The inmost feelings of the mind, too, are false seers, for they dissuade from penitence. Taken over by perverse opinions, either do not believe in the judgements of God, or try to lighten their severity by certain trivial trains of reasoning, or extend their lives by reckless hope. Well then is it said: They have seen false revelations and banishments. To suit their whim, they magnify God’s mercy, while lessening and levelling off the roughness of His threats. Meantime, they indulge in what takes their fancies, and brood over their sins. And it is indeed true, and beyond doubt, that God is merciful, and compassionate, and patient, and of much mercy; but He is also ‘truthful’.d He is just, precisely because Cf. Ezek. 22, 28. Cf. John 8, 12; 14, 6. God and truth are frequently identified. See below, § 5 (II, 1098). c  Dr Sønnesyn points out that this resembles the main argument of Anselm’s De libro arbitrio and De casu diaboli. d  William draws on Ps. 85, 15. The transition from truthfulness to justice is abrupt, but William (like patristic writers and Anselm in his De ueritate) closely associates God’s truth with His justice. a 

b 

214

4.

5.

II, 14 (3.) – II, 15 (1.)

1.

He leaves no crime unpunished; for either a man with crimes on his conscience will demand penance from himself,a or else God will extort punishment in future. So it is mad to put such hope in God’s mercy that one rejects the remedies of penance. As Augustine says, He who promised forgiveness to him who is corrected did not promise life to the incorrigible.b Therefore all His ways are mercy and truth:c mercy by which He forgives the penitent his sins, truth by which He punishes the impenitent. Hence in the Gospel, though of His mercy He let the woman taken in adultery go free, He did not forbear to speak the words of justice: No man hath condemned thee, woman, neither will I condemn thee. Go, and now sin no more (John 8, 10-11). I have blotted out what you have done; keep to what I have laid down, so that you may receive what I have promised. 2, 15. All they that passed by the way have clapped their hands at thee; they have hissed and wagged their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying: Is this the city of perfect beauty, and the joy of all the earth? It is certain that when so great a city fell, many breathed out different prayersd and used different expressions to dwell on her fate: some impudently taunting, some kindly sharing her pain. Wagging the head you can perfectly well understand as conveying either scornful mockery or heartfelt grief. But I would agree that clapping hands and hissing can only have a bad meaning, for they are signs, one of pleasure, the other of ill will. So it may be realised that there were more who were moved to cackle maliciously than were troubled by pity and mourning within them. Yet all alike were amazed at the downfall of so great a city; she had over many generations come to stand at a peak of favour, yet within a few years she had fallen to a pitiable depth of confusion and ruin. The

Cf. e.g. I, 2, 14. The passage is corrupt, and the translation partly speculative. Cf. In euang. Ioh. 33, 7. The last sentence of this paragraph comes from the same work (33, 8). c  Cf. Tobias 3, 2. d  Perhaps read suspirasse (‘sighed out’). a 

b 

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greater the world-wide renown of her pre-eminence had been, the more her astonishing plight loosed the tongues of men now. What external enemies did to the synagogue, internal ones do to church and soul. For they tooa are the city and dwelling of God so long as by God’s grace they bar the entrance to the mind in the face of the stratagems of demons. But when the deceivers, slippery and always changing their shape, have found their insidious way in, they clap as if in triumph for their victory, and emit a mocking hiss at the confusion they cause. As for the wagging of heads, what is that but taunting the hope we place in God? Hence in the Gospel it is said of the Jews, who are their followers in envy and treachery: And they that passed by, blasphemed him (the Lord), wagging their heads, and saying: Vah, he that destroyeth the temple of God. He trusted in God; let him now deliver him if he will (Matt. 27, 39-40 and 43). And in the psalm: All they that saw me have laughed me to scorn: they have spoken with the lips, and wagged the head. He hoped in the Lord, let him deliver him (Ps. 21, 8-9) and the rest. Similarly the demons, seeing church and soul deservedly deprived of the aid of hope in God, rejoice together and scoff. For they think they have a great solace available for their sorry envy, if man cannot rise up to the place from which they fell. ‘Is this’ they say ‘the church, beautiful and renowned the world over, which tried to ascend to heaven to usurp what was once our high position? Is this the soul, created in the image of God, and breathed into man by God just in order to take over by her humble efforts what we lost because of our pride? She has lost even what she was granted: how little she was owed what she was striving for! Straying far from humility, and following close on the example we gave, she too swelled up against the commandments of God and fell to the depths.’ This is perhaps what is put about in various versions by those who find their perfect happiness in our casting down and our misery. But God has the power both to humble them and to call us to penitence, by the marvellous means of which only He knows. Therefore let us repent, and turn to the Lord, if not to repair the a 

The point of et here is unclear.

216

2.

3.

4.

II, 15 (1.) – II, 16 (3.)

1.

2.

3.

fault that led to our calamity, at least to shatter the joy of our enemies. 2, 16. All thy enemies have opened their mouth against thee; they have hissed, and gnashed with the teeth, and have said: We will swallow her up; lo, this is the day which we looked for; we have found it, we have seen it. This verse is closely attached to the one before, and stigmatises the enemy’s dreadful malevolence more vividly. In their hatred, they were so enraged with the Jews that they could scarcely keep control of their teeth: like wild animals, they sharpened their grinders and grimaced with open mouths. Unmindful, thanks to their extreme happiness, of the misfortunes to which men are subject, they took their revenge beyond reasonable limits, abusing the fortunate opportunity they had been afforded. But the enemies who open their mouth against church and soul are those of whose princea is said in Revelations: Now is come salvation, and strength for our God, and the power of his Christ: because the accuser of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God day and night (Rev. 12, 10); and in the psalm: O God, be not thou silent in my praise: for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful man is opened against me (Ps. 108, 2). But happy is anyone who can by some good act suppress and lighten the odium of an accusation inspired by the Devil, but wretched and unhappy one who sweats away at sinning night and day, never troubling to stay open mouths from accusing him with poisonous words. The enemies too press their accusation cheerfully, losing no opportunity both to suggest evil themselves and to denounce it themselves. So they say: ‘Lo, this is the day which we looked for; we have found it, we have seen it.’ The joy they prayed for, the fulfilment of their desire, comes when either generally in the church or individually they see something take place that can be found to be contrary to God’s laws. Wherefore they and their princes ever open the gulfs of their rabid mouths against Christians, to gulp them down inside them, as is said through a 

The Devil.

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Job: He trusteth that the Jordan may run into his mouth (Job 40, 18). But, as Job says elsewhere,a it is God’s work alone to take the leviathan with a hook and bore through his jaw: that is, to deceive the deceiver as it were with a hook, employing hidden contriteness of heart and the penitence of an afflicted spirit,b so that, after the wide-gaping jaws that strive to draw all to them have been bored through, the sinner can make it through to liberty. 2, 17. The Lord hath done that which he purposed; he hath fulfilled his word, which he commanded in the days of old; he hath destroyed and hath not spared, and he hath caused the enemy to rejoice over thee, he hath set up the horn of thy adversaries. The Lord had often hurled threats at the Israelites, warning that they would be a spectacle to all nationsc for their miseries if they did not moderate their shameful behaviour. For instance, when Moses, more or less at the very time of the departure from Egypt,d prayed as a suppliant to Him to forgive the people for their fault in worshipping the calf, He replied: I shall forgive according to thy word; but in the day of revenge I will visit this sin also of theirs (Num. 14, 20 + Exod. 32, 34). Similarly, Moses, through almost all Deuteronomy and the canticle,e invokes evils upon them, foretelling that crimes would not be lacking. What of Isaiah and Micah and the other prophets preceding the transmigration? Did they not freely and openly proclaim to their citizens the ruin of their city, so that they could not shelter behind a plea of ignorance? Thus Isaiah: The daughter of Sion shall be left as a covert in a vineyard, and as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a city that is laid waste (Isa. 1, 8). Micah also: Sion shall be ploughed like a field, and Jerusalem shall be a heap of stones (Mic. 3, 12).f These things the inspired prophets told their fellow-citizens to beware of. But as they set no limit to their outrages, the worst happened, and their Very soon afterwards in fact, at 40, 20-21. Cf. Ps. 50, 19. c  Cf. 1 Cor. 4, 9. d  Below Mount Sinai, and well after the departure. e  That is, the canticle in Deut. 32. f  Cf. n. on I, 12, 5. a 

b 

218

1.

2.

II, 16 (3.) – II, 17 (4.)

3.

4.

words came to be fulfilled. The disastrous result quite equalled the prophets’ threats. The joy of their enemies grew strong, their power was ‘set up’; and there was no sparing of destruction. Similarly, God ‘in the days of old’ made clear to the church the rules for maintaining good conduct. He launched threats if she went astray, promised clemency if she repented. So in the psalm about Christ and Christians—who constitute the church—we have: If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments: if they profane my justices: and keep not my commandments: I will visit their iniquities with a rod: and their sins with stripes. But my mercy I will not take way from him (Ps. 88, 31-34), and the rest. The truth of these words the church acknowledged by their groans during the old persecutions of martyrs, and welcomed gladly when peace was granted. For when God had set up the horn of the adversaries, and seemed now set on completely destroying the church and not sparing it, the dew of peace and most welcome tranquillity suddenly started to come down from heaven above. Every day, too, we see church congregations, as a result of their sins, afflicted by insults, robbed of their properties, altogether disgraced in word and act. And—what a cause for grief!—these things are not the work of outsiders: the very protectors, the very bishops deploy all their devices against those they should have protected. But if our Father’s scourge is patiently borne, persecutors either die or are quelled, and the dew of mercy falls gently down, calming all the surge of tribulations. The soul too, ‘in the days of old’, received instructions on how to behave: prophecies from heaven taught them what to avoid, what to seek. Hence the passage in the psalm: Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. Turn away from evil and do good: seek after peace and pursue it (Ps. 33, 14-15). The following verses soon introduce the reward for obedience and the price of scorn: The eyes of the Lord are upon the just: and his ears unto their prayers. But the countenance of the Lord is against them that do evil things: to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth (Ps. 33, 16-17). So when the soul keeps contravening God’s precepts, He is patient with her for many a year. But when because of her frowardness all His forbearance is used up, God finally pours out all

219

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that the sinful soul is threatened with by the scriptures of old. He destroys her, and does not spare her, for she never knows how to spare herself. In her calamity, He completes the happiness of the Enemy, and with torments subjects to the horn, that is the power, of Satan, the soul which was never prepared to repent and withdraw herself from his sway. 2, 18. Their heart cried to the Lord upon the walls of the daughter of Sion; let tears run down like a torrent day and night; give thyself no rest, and let not the pupil of thy eye be silent. The first clause of this versea connects with the end of the preceding verse. For the prophet, who constrains his lamentations according to the law of metre, has no choice but to follow the practice of poets. Not having the freedom of prose, they frequently join something left over from a verse to the following one. That is why we should take together: The Lordb hath set up the horn of thy adversaries; their heart cried to the Lord upon the walls of the daughter of Sion. This can be fitted to the threefold meaning with reference: To the people of Israel, because the raving Chaldeans uttered loud and blasphemous cries, thinking that it was their own strength they were employing against the Jews, and that they were demolishing their walls even against God’s will.c To the church and soul, because the demons cry against God in their crazy longing to be able to destroy their walls. They are the daughters of Sion, at present by adoption, though in time they will come into their inheritance by right. Their walls are the high places of the virtues, secure behind the bulwarks of God’s grace and placed commandingly above them. Having listed his laments, in which he strains the powers of his eloquence, pressing home one idea in so many ways, the prophet of God finally addresses the nation itself directly, in words that may be understood both communally of the church and individually of the soul: Let tears run down like a torrent day and night, etc. a  William misuses the technical terms: a colon (used differently of a line of poetry in III, prol., 1) should be longer than a comma (for which see I, 6, 1 n.). b  William adds ‘Dominus’ to mark up the connection of the two sentences. c  Whereas it was in fact God’s will, and He was helping them in their attack.

220

1.

2.

II, 17 (4.) – II, 18 (4.)

3.

4.

Here we should first observe how neatly he fits a torrent to healthful compunction. For a torrent does not always flow in the same manner; at one time it is short of rain from heaven and loses its force, at another it is well supplied and directs its rushing course down hill. Similarly, compunction for sins is poured into the eyes as a result not of human impulse but of inspiration from God. Remembering her guilt, or because her glory is delayed, emits a great rush of tears, and with them washes away the filth of earth. The result is that, once the sad contagion of vice has been removed, the shoots of virtue can grow in abundance, and of such a soul may justly be sung the words: The stream of the river maketh the city of God joyful (Ps. 45, 5). Let the soul then be thoroughly cleansed by God’s grace. Let it lend itself to this pouring in, and never find time for deadly leisure, but day and night (that is, in prosperity and adversity alike) concentrate on this occupation. In this way, mindful of its sins, it will not grow haughty in good times, and, trusting in God’s mercy, will not fall or lose hope when times are bad. The Lord himself will be at hand; He will not suffer us to be tempted above that which we are able, but will give with temptation issue, that we may be able to bear it.a And, as is said elsewhere: Thou wilt feed us with the bread of tears: and give us for our drink tears in measure (Ps. 79, 6). What follows, Let not the pupil of thy eye be silent, is said in a transferred, that is a metaphorical, type of language, as in another place: My eyes have failed for thy word, saying … (Ps. 118, 82). For a pupil cannot be silent nor an eye speak. But we must realise that this wording is used because no speech can ever be more effective in winning any request than a tear falling from an eye stung towards the good.b So such an eye should constantly focus on God, and not merely flow copiously with tears (something few can manage)c but show contrition of heart, an easy sacrifice, as the

Cf. 1 Cor. 10, 13. Some source may lie behind this (odd) wording. c  Though St Dunstan famously could (cf. VD, e.g. 1, 31, 2, where there is an even clearer allusion to Num. 29, 36). a 

b 

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psalmista witnesses, and one most welcome to God: A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit etc. (Ps. 50, 19). But this holocaust of tears and a contrite heart will be wafted to heaven with a welcome odourb if one scorns the allurements of the world and awaits the solace of God’s pity, and says: To thee have I lifted up my eyes through to Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us (Ps. 122, 1-3). And let us hope that we shall the more quickly receive a remedy from heaven the more doggedly we divorce ourselves from pleasures on earth. Hence the Lord said: Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted (Matt. 5, 5); and in Revelations : God shall wipe away all tears from the eyes of the saints (Rev. 7, 17 = 21, 4). 2, 19. Arise, give praise in the night, in the beginning of thy watches, and pour out thy heart like water before the face of the Lord thy God; lift up thy hands to him for the lives of thy little children, that have fainted for hunger and thirst at the top of all the streets. Inc the preceding verse, had enjoined constantly renewed compunction of the heart, in prosperity as much as in adversity. But because this seemed possibly to be asking too much, he now urges that it should be observed only in adversity,d something that is thought both more necessary and more natural. Arise, give praise in the night, as if to say: Though you are troubled by various adversities, do not lie there, thunderstruck and despairing, but get up, and be energetic in putting your life to rights. And when your reason is wide awake, let its ‘beginning’ be to remember to praise God, who afflicts you temporally here to give a foretaste of the eternal torments in hell. You will be right, I say, to get up to give praise to God, for in treating you like this He is showinge Who in fact only talks of its acceptability. Cf. Num. 29, 36. c  William unusually starts his commentary on this verse with the moral interpretation (closing with a short ‘historical’ passage, which he dismisses as ‘quite obvious’); he returns to it in § 5 after the allegorising. d  ‘In the night’; see above, II, 18, 3. e  ostentum seems to be used as synonymous with inditium (‘sign’). a 

b 

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4.

not severity but a gentleness that calls for praise. He is burning up your evil deeds in the furnace of a punishment that will pass, so as to find that less punishment is needed in the future. This is God’s artful pity, this is His wise foresight that every age should welcome. In this world, then, as in the blackest night of ignorance, if you start on a good work, you should wakefully connect it with the praise of God, so that on a beginning marked by good intentions may ensue an equally good end in good works. But since you have something in the past for you to lament, and something in the future for you to fear, ‘pour out thy heart like water’. For to pour out one’s heart like water is to bring forth a fount of tears from the abyss of the inmost heart. And before the face of the Lord thy God is an excellent addition: even if a good work is done in public view, the intention should always remain hidden. For it is a waste of time to weary your eyes with weeping and to try to win men’s compliments by this display . How what follows, Lift up thy hands to him for the lives of thy little children, that have fainted for hunger and thirst at the top of all the streets, can be understood in relation to Judaea is quite obvious: that nation, lifting up its hands to heaven (as men do who pray from the heart), should commend to God’s mercy the souls of little children, destroyed in the streets by deadly captivity. Allegorically, the meaning is this: There is an accursed famine that often torments the innards of the church. God through the prophet threatens the earth with this: I will send forth a famine into the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord (Amos 8, 11). This has grown worse in our time, for as father Gregory says (I have remarked this before):a ‘Although there is an audience for the good, there is a shortage of men to speak it’. Amid the raging of this famine, those childish in the faith and faint in hope lie dying at the side of the streets, that is the byways of error. They never make an effort to arise to do good: this world goes on whirling their pitiable souls along the branching paths of sin. Yet for these the church lifts up her hands (that is, the sacrifices of good works) to God, asking that they may at last a 

Cf. I, 2, 12 with n.

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renounce their infirm senses and start at last to think on what is higher and worthy of perfect men.a May they (as in the parable in the Gospel)b leave the outletsc of the highways (that is, schisms and heresies) and the hedges (that is, the sins that shut off God from approaching the soul). May they come together to the Lord’s feast, to the wedding of the son of God, at which earthly and heavenly are allied by the link of blessed peace. Morally: the prophet had previously warned that a man conscious of his sins should take care to wash them away with tears. But since it profits you little to think only of your own interests while neglecting your neighbour, he adds: Lift up thy hands to God for the lives of little children and the rest, as if to say: if you want the tears you shed to bring you advantage, do not cease to stretch out the hand of pity to those straitened by shortage of food because of their slender means. To add to the grace you are piling up for yourself, do not delay bringing under your roof those you see wasting away in the open air. You will find it a sovereign remedy for your sins in the eyes of God if by your generous help and largesse you try to save the souls of the wretched when they are already breathing their last. 2, 20. Behold, O Lord, and consider of whom thou hast thus made a vintage. Shall women then eat their own fruit, their children of a span long? Are the priest and the prophet being slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? We should bear in mind the emotion of the holy prophet, how he varies his language, turning it now hither now thither, according as the onrush of the Holy Spirit drove him. Now he laments the present ills of his nation, now recalls past good; now he reproves sin, now invites to prayer and penitence. And, to make sure that ignorance is not pleaded as an excuse, he supplies the actual words of the prayer : Behold, O Lord, and consider. He asks Him, through whom they See n. on I, 20, 4. Matt. 22, 9 with Luke 14, 23. c  Not transl. by Douai in Matt. 22, 9 ‘ad exitus uiarum’. a 

b 

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II, 19 (4.) – II, 20 (3.)

2.

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behold all things and who Himself beholds all things, to behold. He asks Him to behold not so as to torment more sorely but so as to re-consider and show mercy. For God’s beholding is delivery from tribulation. For example, you have in the psalm: Behold the eyes of the Lord are on them that fear him: and on them that hope in his mercy: to deliver their souls from death; and feed them in famine (Ps. 32, 18-19). And indeed of no nation has such a vintage been made as the Jewish: as I have often said,a just as they had been raised incomparably high, so they were irreparably destroyed. Examples of both are close to hand. Kindnesses of God: the safe crossing of the Red Sea,b the food snowing down from the sky;c the fountain that caused grimaces with its bitter tasted but was treated with a tree that made it sweet,e or the one that flowed from the rock;f so many gifts of miracles, legal provisions, rules for ritual. Punishments (never heard of anywhere in such quantity): as when, during the rebellion of Korah and Abiram, the earth opened up with an enormous fissure, closed its jaws again, and plunged many thousands into the chasm;g as when the fire of heaven’s wrath destroyed a large part of the camp;h as when the fiery force of serpents killed sinners with a sore wasting;i and much else that makes one shudder to hear, and is disagreeable to relate. But—making all that seem trivial and dull in comparison— the agony of the present topic surpasses absolutely all other events in history. For though we often read in accounts of the Gentilesj that the stronger sex was driven to eat unspeakable food in order to withstand the stress of siege, it is alien to all we know of humankind that women should be so barbarous as to do something Cf. II, 13, 1; II, 15, 1. Cf. Exod. 14, 21-2. c  Cf. Exod. 16, 14-15; Prudentius, Cathemerinon liber 5, 97. d  Cf. Vergil, Georg. 2, 246-247. e  Cf. Exod. 15, 25. f  Cf. Exod. 17, 6. g  Cf. Num. 16, 24-33. h  Cf. Num. 16, 46-47. i  Cf. Num. 21, 6. j  See A. Stramaglia, Decl. magg. 12, pp. 13-22. a 

b 

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beyond the range of the most savage of animals, and stuff their own offspring into their guts. It is true that we do not elsewherea read of anything like this taking place during the siege by Nebuchadnezzar; but the prophet said it happened, and we ought not refuse to believe him. But when Benhadad king of the Assyrians besieged Samaria, a woman, voluntarily confessing that she had killed and eaten her son, also lodged a complaint with the king that her neighbour was cheating her by refusing to do her part in the crime .b Again, during Titus’ siege of Jerusalem Josephusc tells the same story. The smell of burnt flesh attracted greedy robbersd to run to the scene. The mother, not denying what she had done, went out of her way to leave some of the food and invite them to eat with her. Hence, in our passage, we are told that women ate their children ‘of a span long’: not merely did a satiety of forbidden food not bring on nausea, but the women took the trouble to ‘cure’ food for future use.e It may be deduced from this that the nation has always consisted of brutal savages, given that their womenfolk did not abstain from eating their own loved ones. Further, the slaughter of priests and prophets that took place in the templef barred them (quite rightly) from all hope of appeasing God and winning back His grace, especially as among the Gentiles these personages might have deserved reverence, the former for their sacred rank, the latter for their trustworthy prophecies. But what would Jews not dare to do?— after all, they did not hesitate to hale to the Cross even the Lord Jesus, king of ages, arbiter of life and death. Unhappy people, and the victims of their own cunning, for what they thought they Not e.g. in Jer. 39, 1-2. Cf. 4 Kgs. 6, 26-30. c  Cf. Ps. Rufinus, Ios. Bell. Iud. 7, 8 (p. 312r); see also IV, 10, 1. d  Sicarius normally means an assassin or at least a foot-pad. It is not clear why men should kill (rather than just rob) under these circumstances. Josephus speaks of satellites in the service of tyrants. e  This seems to be a product of William’s fevered imagination. I know no early parallel for this use of curare of curing meat. (OED s.v. cure v. 1, 7a gives English examples from 1665.) f  See the lemma. But the slaughter was presumably the doing of the Babylonians rather than the Jews. a 

b 

226

4.

II, 20 (3.) – II, 21 (2.)

5.

1.

2.

were doing to protect their own lawsa resulted in their losing both nation and place.b In the moral sense, it may be said of this verse that women eat their children when soft and slack souls receive the fruit of their sins in the same measure. For they then swallow back again, into (as it were) the secret places within them, all the sins they had put into action. Also, priests and prophets are slain in the sanctuary of God when the very primates of the church, who should have corrected others, themselves fail to perform actions that conduce to life, and calmly put up with others failing too. But as I have often said all this before,c so rich is the topic, and shall (with God’s help) say it again,d let me gather in the meaning of the two verses remaining in the second alphabet. 2, 21. The child and the old man have lain down without on the ground; my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword. Thou hast slain them in the day of thy wrath; thou hast killed, and shewn them no pity. Because he feels pity, the prophet shares in the misery of others, and takes over into his own grief all he sees that his nation is suffering. It is like this, yes like this, that the rulers of the church ought to behave, measuring their own emotions by the feelings of others, so as to rejoice with them that rejoice and weep with them that weep:e either because, as the comic poet says,f they are human beings and ought to think nothing human alien to them, or because shepherds of the church ought to look around carefully to see which of their subjects are lying ‘without on the ground’, that is, have left the secret chamber of their inner sight and are whole-heartedly in pursuit of the earthly. These people, disobey-

a 

1 n.

Cf. III, 10-12, 5 ‘to protect their fathers’ traditions’. For cautela see III, 29-30,

Cf. John 11, 48. Cf. II, 3, 2; II, 17, 3. d  Cf. e.g. IV, 10, 2. e  Cf. Rom. 12, 15. f  Terence, Haut. 77. b  c 

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ing the apostle’s precept, are ‘children’ in sense, not malice,a right to the end of their lives wailing over childish trivialities, and labouring over transitory things that slip away through their fingers. Of those like this is said: The child being a hundred years old shall be accursed (Isa. 65, 20). These people are ‘old men’, withered and full of vices rather than years, are never in the spirit of their mind renewed unto knowledgeb of God, for they always concentrate on the deeds of the ‘old man’.c These people are ‘virgins’ and ‘young men’, who once flourished in the pursuit of good works but are now slain by the sword of despair. And this in the day of the wrath of the Lord, for the anger of God ‘over the sons of men’d is shown if in their wretchedness they despair of finding remedies for their sins. For one wound is that of the love of God, as in the Song of Songs: I am wounded with charity (S. of S. 2, 5 = 5, 8 VL). Another is the wound caused by the sort of momentary slip that often makes even the just fall—though often they rise again, by the grace of God; hence A just man falls seven times, and rises again (Prov. 24, 16). Yet another is a wound that is almost incurable, when sinners stab themselves with the sword of despair. Against this wound the holy man cries out: Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why dost thou disquiet me? Hope thou in God, for I will still give praise to him (Ps. 41, 12). The first wound looks forward to glory, the second to forgiveness, the third (unless it is cured by penance) to punishment. God is said to have ‘killed’ such people because, by a judgement hidden and beyond our knowledge, He never called them back from their disgraceful behaviour. This may be thought a rash remark, seeing that every day, to correct the wicked, He thunders out His precepts and blazes forth His miracles. But it is one thing to warn someone to stop, another thing to push him so that he falls, or prevent him getting up again. These He for some while puts up with long-sufferingly; but when He has once decided to endure no longer, He strikes harshly, Cf. 1 Cor. 14, 20. Cf. Eph. 4, 23. c  As opposed to the ‘new man’: cf. Col. 3, 9-10. d  Cf. e.g. Ps. 13, 2. a 

b 

228

3.

II, 21 (2.) – II, 22 (2.)

1.

2.

rather than stroking with any gentle feelings of pity. Thus we read next: 2, 22. Thou hast called as to a festival those that should terrify me round about; and there was none in the day of the wrath of the Lord that escaped and was left; those that I nourished and brought up, the enemy hath consumed. Under the guise of the Jewish captivity is signified the day of the departure of the soul from the body, or the day of judgement on which everything will be weighed in a rigorous balance. For, as has been said before, our misery is crowded about by the festivitya of our enemies, and at the soul’s going out a great number of them appear at once from all sides. What will happen on the day of judgement? Will not Satan be loosed from his prison,b so that his terrifying and awesome appearance may be, for any stains that remain on the holy, like the cleansing produced by some furnace. For no one, however holy, will be able to escape that strict judgement, when nothing will be left unexamined. The sight of the Enemy will consume all the liberty that had been nourished before its time, and brought up in perverse works.c But the letter thau comes to console us for such severe treatment. For it is placed next to this verse, and represents the standard of the holy Cross.d It will be the unique remedy of all troubles not only to have believed in the crucified but also to have mortified the vices and crucified the rebellious pleasures. It is therefore the Cross that orders us to be obedient to the Father until death, the Cross that is the crown of our obedience. It is this that gives an example of obedience, this that offers assurance that sollemnitate picks up diem sollemnem (‘festival’ in the lemma). The reference back seems to be to II, 15, 4. b  Cf. Rev. 20, 7. c  The point might be that the soul aims at ‘liberty’ throughout life (cf. II, 12, 5; II, 16, 3), freedom, that is, from the bondage of sin (see I, 2, 3 n.), but can only fully attain it in heaven. But the context seems to indicate rather that, as Dr Sønnesyn argues) William is speaking of freedom of will, which is misused by those not mature (cf. I, 19, 7 n.) enough to employ it responsibly. Cf. I, 5, 12; I, 11, 1; I, 12, 7; I, 14, 11; II, 8, 6. d  William has in mind the shape of the Greek letter. See III, 64-66, 1. a 

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glory can be achieved. Hence the Lord, to show us that we cannot be saved without the Cross, says: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow (Matt. 16, 24), and again: If any man minister to me, let him follow me; and where I am, there also shall my minister be (John 12, 26). In these two verses, He revealed both the rigour of the example He set and the sweetness of the prize. Whoever longs for the sweetness must not shrink from the rigour. It is a mark of shamelessness to seek great rewards without being willing to deserve them. But because in such matters a suppliant prayer is better than lengthy preaching, let this be the end of the second book and the second alphabet. Grant, I beg you, almighty God Jesus, that we may by your example so crucify earthly vices in us, that by your gift we may attain the joys of heaven; so tread where you commanded that we are not deprived of what you promised.

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Book Three III,

Prologue 1.

In the hope that the grace of Christ the Lord might, under the heada of Morality, draw out from myself remorse for my sins, I have put before the reader for his kind consideration the two earlier alphabets of the prophet Jeremiah together with a threefold explanation. As the blessed Jerome says,b they are in the Hebrew composed in the Sapphic metre, in such a way that each verse has a single letter prefacing it. Now the Sapphic (well known in Latin) is one of the hendecasyllabic metres,c much used for hymns sung in church. There are two other metres consisting of eleven syllables; but the Sapphic consists of four verses, three with eleven syllables, while the fourth has five. One example among many is ‘Nocte surgentes uigilemus omnes’ [‘let us all arise at night and keep vigil’].d But this alphabet, which I am now trying with a  Literally, it seems, ‘where morality comes up’. Cf. in this prologue occasionem at § 2 (24), and esp. § 4 ‘we everywhere find a welcome opportunity for remorse’. For the idea see esp. Prol., 2 ‘this is why, from the whole range of possible topics, you have chosen for me the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah, that through their exposition the grace of compunction might be more abundant and the flame of divine love more inspiring’. b  Jerome, Epistles 30, 3, 2. William simplifies but at the same time amplifies his remarks. c  Text and articulation of this sentence are disputable. Perhaps: ‘The Sapphic is in Latin the finest of the hendecasyllabic metres.’ Hendecasyllables have eleven syllables to the line. d  Hymn. 63, 1 (p. 265).

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God’s help to explain, is saida to consist of a different metre. It is a ‘trimeter’, so that one and the same letter marks off the beginning of three verses.b It would be unreasonable to expect, especially from a feeble intellect,c a proper account of what is to be referred to the synagogue, what to the church; for it seems more important to tell of the sacraments of the head than to define the duties of the members. It is true that I have particularly taken on this task rather to arouse tears for sinsd than to explain the details of the sacraments;e let me nevertheless press on with my work as I planned it, relying on the aid of Him who said: Open thy mouth wide, and I fill it (Ps. 80, 11). He Himself will grant that, though I am anxious to meditate on His glory, I may often be able to take this opportunity to deplore my miserable state.  May the Lord Jesus Christ, our God and Saviour, open to me in my thirst a vein of a fountain springing up into life everlasting (John 4, 14), so that out of my belly may flow living waters, as He promised.f In fact the thirst in my breast is but slight, a mere trickle too the draught I have taken of divine learning; yet far more restricted is the capacity of my eloquence, should I wish to give others something to drink. Yet though like an ant I have taken on my shoulders a load that I cannot carry, I hasten none the less towards Again by Jerome, loc. cit. William therefore (normally) comments on the third book three verses at a time (see III, 1-3, 1 n.). He does not preface his citation of III, 1-3 with the letter aleph or that of 4-6 with beth; but note his remarks at III, 4-6, 8. He then appends the Hebrew letters from ghimel on. For the source of his comments on their meaning in this book, see III, 16-18, 7 n. c  The exact wording is irrecoverable. For a suggestion, here translated, see p. 32 (discussion in CC CM 244, p. 327). d  Or ‘the tears of sinners’. e  William seems to argue that in this third book the allegory that links the text to synagogue and church is less important than the allegory linking it to Christ, head of the church. His commentary as a whole (he implies) is more concerned with the moral sense (i.e. the lessons to be drawn for the soul) than with the ‘sacraments’ of Christ; but it is his ‘plan’ in Book 3 to focus on the latter. Some distaste for the sacramental matter might show up in his choice of the normally dismissive word falerae (‘trappings’); but I have translated by the blander ‘details’. f  Cf. John 7, 38 (‘rivers of living water’). a 

b 

232

2.

3.

III, Prol. (1.-4.)

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the completion of my book, relying on Him who said: Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you (Matt. 11, 28). What an ant is given by its natural vigour and the support of its comrades will be worked in me by the Author of nature and by the love of my brethren, so that, as He promised, He may keep the writer upright as he staggers under his great burden, He whose word and promise do not fly empty away: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away (Mark 13, 31). I have taken care to include these words just because all the earlier passages on which I have brooded are trivial when I contemplate the abyss of the alphabet that lies ahead. The Holy Spirit has so shaped the composition that in one place speaks of the head of the church (Christ), in another of the body of Christ (the church), sometimes of the synagogue, often of the ethical doctrine of the good life: all this in so disconnected and disorderly a manner that the transition from one speaker to another is at times almost imperceptible. But so beautifully is the work judgeda that sometimes the same sentence can perfectly well be applied to both the head and the body, under different aspects. It should also be noted that, whatever the tone of the language, we everywhere find a welcome opportunity for remorse. For the prophet is composing laments that will be beneficial to humankind, whether he speaks ‘corporeally’ b of the Passion and humility of our Redeemer, or ‘universally’ of the downfall of the synagogue, or ‘individually’ of the failings of members of the church. Indeed the point I am making can be seen to hold good in the very first verse, which refers historically to the prophet, figuratively to Christ, and ethically to everyone who is perfectly faithful.

libramen hints at a ‘balancing-act’. William widens the allegorical interpretation to be practised in Book 3 into treatment of Christ and of the church; as in Books 1-2 the ‘moral’ sense concerns the individual soul. This is made clearer in the final sentence of the Prologue. But the wording of the present sentence is a little opaque. corporaliter is used to stress that Christ is being considered as a human being (not very helpfully after the mention just above of the church as the body of Christ). uniuersaliter alludes to treatment of the synagogue (it is odd that the church is not mentioned) as a whole, and particulariter to treatment of individual church members. a 

b 

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3, 1-3.a I am the man that see my poverty by the rod of his indignation. Jeremiah is rightly said to ‘see his poverty’, because what other seers had seen in a dark manner,b with (so to speak) purblind prophecy, he to his sorrow saw clearly and with his own eyes, when his people were taken captive. He also had a deeper insight from within him, since what a nation wild and drunk on calamity refused to understand even despite his warnings, he proclaimed openly: the miseries of his fellows were their condign punishment by God. It is true that the fierce king of Babylon had so far softened that he ordered him to choose between remaining in Jerusalem and moving to Chaldea, where the royal beneficence would ensure that he lacked for nothing that eastern luxury could provide.c But Jeremiah, thinking it beneath the dignity of a prophet to owe his life and its prolongation to the gift of a foreigner, had preferred to stay on amid the ashes of his relatives and the pathetic ruins of his homeland. Yet he calls the nation’s captivity ‘his’, for to mingle with the grief in his own mind he poured all the bodily sufferings of others: a man born not for his own advantage but for that of his native land. This verse refers equally to our Redeemer, who (as the apostle says) being rich became poor for our sakes, to make us rich by His own poverty.d Of this He says both in His own person: The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests; but the son of man hath not where to lay his head (Luke 9, 58), and through the psalmist: I am poor, and in labours from my youth: and being exalted have been humbled and troubled (Ps. 87, 16). For He became poor by taking on human form, and from His youth, that is from His thirtieth year, when He began to preach, He underwent the severest labours. Next, He was raised high on the Cross—the start of His exaltation in this world, thanks to belief in His divinity; yet He was most abusively humbled and troubled, because of the insoa  I have taken the opportunity to reunite III, 1 with III, 2-3. The Text should have followed the Vulgate by dividing the commentary by groups of three verses. b  Cf. 1 Cor. 13, 12. c  Cf. Jer. 40, 4. d  Cf. 2 Cor. 8, 9.

234

1.

2.

III, 1-3 (1.-4.)

3.

4.

lence of those who mocked Him and the anguish of the Passion. The usefulness of this poverty was hidden from men’s knowledge: they did not know what good it was bringing to birth for humankind. He alone knew its mystery: aware of His divinity, He realised that the gift of His abasement would bring about the raising of our mortal state. Because He foresaw the benefit His poverty would bring in the future, and forbearingly endured disadvantage in the present, He is right to say: I am the man that see my poverty. Here the addition of the word ‘man’ shows the manly and unyielding patience of Christ. And He added by the rod of his indignation, that is, God the Father’s, speaking from a man’s viewpoint. Since no man ever gives over another to death or injury except in anger, the Jews thought that God was right to be indignant with our Redeemer, because He had called Himself His son: hence His being laid open to undeserveda abuse and punishment. Hence they also cried: He trusted in God; let him now deliver him if he will (Matt. 27, 43). Hence too His complaint on the Cross: God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matt. 27, 46). But in fact God the Father made good use of the malevolence of the Jews. He delivered up to them the body of His dearest Son, so that His precious blood might wash away the flagrant crimes of the world. Wherefore the apostle says: God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all (Rom. 8, 32). The Old Testament is in fact full of instances of our negative emotions being attributed to God, anger, wrath, indignation: not because these are to be found in God (to whom is said: But thou, O Lord of Sabaoth, judgest with tranquillity (Wisd. 12, 18 + Jer. 11, 20)), but because an action by God could not be fully known if it were not expressed in words to which men are accustomed.b The mind of a perfect man will proceed to make this same complaint, if it considers from where it has fallen to its present depths. The wicked man rejoices when he acts badly, and exults in what is especially bad; according to Revelations, he says he is rich The normal meaning of indignanter is ‘with indignation’, but William is playing with the idea of unworthiness (see § 6 below, and nn. on I, 14, 9 and II, 13, 3). b  See I, 19, 11 n. a 

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and has need of nothing, when in fact he is wretched and miserable (Rev. 3, 17). But the chosen man, even if riches flow in abundance, does not set his heart upon them,a for, having been cast down from eternal happiness, he realises in what poverty of spiritual good he is wallowing. He looks with disdain on all he sees, tormented as he is by the thunderclaps of calamity all around him. He never relaxes into idleness, for the just indignation of God is always fixed in his mind. It is only just for the creature to be punished, when it unjustly scorns its creator. But we must look more closely at the words ‘by the rod of indignation’. We read of the ‘rod of iron’ b by which the ‘vessels of wrath’c are broken, so that they perish for ever. There is also a rod of justice or ‘direction’,d by which the sons of pity are directed, so as to be heirs in the kingdom of Christ and God. Equally, here we have mention of the rod of indignation, with which God scourgeth every son whom he receiveth (Hebr. 12, 6), to correct, not to scatter, to punish not for all time, but for the moment. If I understand our Lord and Saviour as being struck by this rod, I do not think I am impugning the faith. For precisely this seems to be what is meant when God the Father says through the prophet: For the wickedness of my people have I struck him, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity (Isa. 53, 8 + 3). Who would deny that indignation has a role in the punishment of crime? Christ therefore was struck not because of any crimes of His that merited indignation,e for He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth,f but so that the indignation of God the Father might be softened or rather broken, though thanks to their crimes it loomed justly over the human race. But such is the interconnection of head and members that in the psalm He even calls His own the sins of the people for which He was suffering: Far from my salvation are the words of my sins (Ps. 21, 2). Which is to say: The sins of my people prevent For the phrase cf. Job 7, 17. Cf. Ps. 2, 9. c  Cf. Jer. 50, 25 (‘weapons’ Douai); Rom. 9, 22. d  Cf. Hebr. 1, 8 (‘sceptre’ Douai); Ps. 44, 7 (‘sceptre of uprightness’ Douai). e  See § 3 n. f  Cf. 1 Pet. 2, 22. a 

b 

236

5.

6.

III, 1-3 (4.-8.)

7.

8.

me from being saved in this world, and delivered from the gibbet of the Cross. For He was handed over to death precisely in order to give Life to His people.a Because He had to experience this Passion and knew its benefits, He (as I said) proclaims Himself a man and one who sees His poverty. There are also the blessed that are poor in spirit,b whose patience shall not perish for ever;c they can say the same thing, by His mediation and co-operation. They can do nothing without Him, for in this vale of tearsd they cannot without His grace last out in patience, or in the land of the livinge be blessed in glory. It is to be noted that in saying ‘the rod of his indignation’ did not specify whose rod. This is the figure called prolepsis, or praeoccupatio.f Similarly in the psalm: The foundations thereof are in the holy mountains: the Lord loveth the gates of Sion (Ps. 86, 1-2). He should, it seems, have said: ‘The foundations of Sion are in the holy mountains: the Lord loveth its gates.’ This figure is a cliché in Holy Scripture, so frequently is it used. Next comes: He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, and not into light. Only against me he hath turned and turned again his hand all the day. These words fit Christ like this. God the Father led His Son into darkness and not into light when He sent Him from that inaccessible light, in which He is co-eternal with Him, into the world, to disperse the darkness of human blindness. Hence the words: The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it (John 1, 5). And again: That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world (John 1, 9). Alternatively, the Son was led into the darkness when at the end of the mystery of the Passion His soul went down into hell to bring forth the souls of the just, imprisoned there for so many crimes. Of this is written: The people that sat in darkness, hath seen great The argument seems a little elliptical. Cf. Matt. 5, 3. c  Cf. Ps. 9, 19. d  Cf. Ps. 83, 7. e  Cf. Ps. 26, 13. f  Cf. Bede, De schematibus 2, 1. a 

b 

237

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light: to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, light is risen (Matt. 4, 16 + Isa. 9, 2). But in neither place did the darkness comprehend Him, for He passed along the shadowy path of this life without sin, and His soul was not left in hell, nor yet did corruption make His flesh totter. Of this He says in the psalm: Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; nor wilt thou give thy holy one to see corruption (Ps. 15, 10). Nor do the following words, Only against me he hath turned and turned again his hand all the day, recoil from this interpretation. God turns His hand in order to scourge, and turns it again to console. He turns it when He punishes, and turns it again when He pities. He only turned His hand on Lord Jesus when He handed over His flesh, weak, as He Himself says, and shuddering at the chalice of the Passion,a to death for the sake of all. He turned it again when He exalted Him above all men in the world. And what is said about humbling? Christ became obedient to the Father for us unto death, even to the death of the cross (Phil. 2, 8). And on exalting: For which cause God hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above all names: that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth: and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2, 9-11). As to humbling, He Himself says: Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause I came unto this hour (John 12, 27). And as to exalting: Glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee (John 17, 1). And a voice came to him saying: I have both glorified , and will glorify again (John 12, 28). For God the Father had previously glorified the Son by many miracles, and after the Passion He glorified Him a second time, when He made it known to believers that He is King of Ages.b But the Son too glorified the Father when He caused Him to be preached by the apostles all over the world, though previously He had been known only in Judaea.c For instance, though the sects Cf. Matt. 26, 41-2; Mark 14, 36 and 38; Luke 22, 42. Cf. 1 Tim. 1, 17. c  Cf. Ps. 75, 2. a 

b 

238

9.

10.

III, 1-3 (8.-13.)

11.

12.

13.

of Christians, Jews and Saracens have conflicting views about the Son, they all believe in their hearts and confess with their mouths that God the Father is the creator of the world. Nor is the addition ‘all the day’ superfluous; it means: for the whole period of the preaching and the Passion. On preaching is said: I walked sorrowful all the day long, Lord, for my soul was filled with illusions (Ps. 37, 7-8). He was sorrowful with a feeling of pity, pouring out bowels of compassion, for those whom He could not win with miracles, or influence by words, to stop them mocking Him and saying: By Beelzebub the prince of devils he casteth out devils (Matt. 9, 34). And on the Passion: I have spread my hands all the day to a people that believeth not, but contradicteth me (Isa. 65, 2 + Rom. 10, 21). For He spread His hands on the Cross, showing by this gesture that He wished to embrace the whole world and attract them to faith, while calling even His persecutors together to receive His grace. But they contradicted and did not believe, crying: If he is the Son of God, let him now come down from the cross, and we believe him (Matt. 27, 40 + 42). These words equally suit the universal church of the elect. For the Lord led her and brought her into darkness and not into light, because He did not caress her with allurements, but exercised her with tribulations and filed her down with distresses. For example, He also said, when at the very moment of the Passion He was bidding farewell to the apostles, who are the columns of the church: In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world (John 16, 33). I pass over what he had foretold earlier, that they would be beaten in synagogues, brought before kings and governors, betrayed by brothers, friends and relatives,a and (what made them especially unpopular) that all who most worked for their destruction would think they were doing a service to God.b This prophecy stood unimpaired in respect of the successors of the apostles too, when such killings took place in the church, and Christianity was so straitened, that even those who were rea  b 

Cf. Mark 13, 9 and 12. Cf. John 16, 2.

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garded as chosen were caused to stumble and yielded. Many who for the brilliance of their teachings were regarded as luminaries of the church were plunged in the darkness of disbelief, their reason clouded over by the degree of persecution. The Lord had described this figuratively in Matthew’s Gospel: Then the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven (Matt. 24, 29). He meant us to understand by the sun Himself, the Sun of justice, in whose wings is health,a who is risen up as a light in darkness to the righteous in heart.b By the moon He meant the church, which in its monthly cycle now waxes by preaching, now wanes by persecution; all the lightc and brilliance it brings to the world, it borrows from Christ. But as the whirlwind of persecution flew across the world, infidels thought that the strength of Christ had been extinguished, and the church did not shine out with its normal miracles. Moreover, the stars, that is men famous for word and works, slipped down from heaven (that is, the church where God sits) and became wrapped in the pitch darkness of error. But that by stars are meant teachers is taught by Daniel: They that are learned shall shine as the brightness of the firmament: and they that instruct many to justice, as stars for all eternity (Dan. 12, 3). Against the same church of the elect the Lord turns His hand and turns it again in the further sense that if she in any way strays from the good He immediately reins her in by the bitter sorrows of this life. But the congregation of the wicked, as it runs along the more brilliant ways of this life,d goes on down the wide and broad road that leads to death.e It therefore goes to destruction, since, as the psalmist says, They are not in the labour of men: neither shall they be scourged like men. Therefore pride hath held them fast: they are covered with their iniquity and their wickedness (Ps. 72, 5-6). But as for holy church, God keeps her from straying precisely to Cf. Mal. 4, 2. Cf. Ps. 111, 4. c  genuini luminis is a plausible conjecture, but it clashes with the borrowed nature of the light. d  Cf. Augustine, Conf. 7, 6, 8 (‘comparatively brilliant’: O’Donnell ad loc.). e  Cf. Matt. 7, 13-14. a 

b 

240

14.

15.

III, 1-3 (13.-17.)

16.

17.

make her worthy of heaven. It is part of His ordered plan that living stones,a to be sent to the Jerusalem on high, should be polished here by being repeatedly struck, lest any irregularity or roughness convict them of being unfit for the heavenly building. And this ‘all the day’, since for the entire length of the present life our Saviour now tames the church with scourgings, now revives her with comforts, now straitens her with persecutions, now makes her wider with preaching. So, to pass on to the moral meaning, the soul speaks, in full understanding of her own poverty, and, when she is inspired by the divine spirit, she knows that anything she has of good is thanks to God’s grace. She raises the eyes of her heart, and, not being able to penetrate the inmostb light, she realises in what a gloom of misery she is wrapped. If she ever seeks to aspire to the light of divinity, immediately, or very soon, she is dazzled by such brilliance; weighed down by sin, the sight of her mind blunted, she sinks down and is immersed once more in the dark. And when she thinks over her sins, the day of death, the sore punishments that will last for ever, and when, though purposing to rise from her sins she falls back again in the very attempt, no wonder if she laments that she has been brought into darkness, and not into light. And the outcomec of these miseries is often that she does not ascribe any good she has received to herself,d but out of humility watches over the evil things she does and suffers, keeping them always before her eyes, while being in a way unaware of the good, if by God’s grace she has done any. And since God sometimes exposes the chosen soul to the stings of temptation, but sometimes applies the soothing poultice of comfort, it is well said: Only against me he hath turned and turned again his hand all the day. As for the souls of the wicked, Cf. 1 Pet. 2, 5 (quoted at IV, 1, 8). i.e. that of God; cf. Bede, In I Sam. I, 987-988 (p. 35) ‘oculum mentis in supernae atque intimae lucis contemplatione defigebat’, ‘fixed the eye of His mind on the contemplation of the highest and inmost light’. c  intuitus does not seem to pick up intuitu above, and appears to be corrupt; one expects e.g. euentus. d  Nor, one might think, should she do so: to God rather (cf. III, 29-30, 2). a 

b 

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they walk round about,a and promenade in Gath and in the streets of Askelon,b and, in the words of the book of Wisdom, leave everywhere tokens of joy, nor is there any meadow that their riot escapes.c For God does not think them worthy of the scourge that punishes for the moment, so that He can keep it back for punishment that will never end. But as to the soul which God chose before the foundation of the world,d to make her conformable to the image of His son:e if she is foolish and sins, she is worn down by scourgings; if she comes back to her senses and ceases to err, she is refreshed by comfort—but in each case with the utmost moderation, so that in prosperity she cannot grow insolent because she is puffed up, or in adversity grow desperate because she is broken. Nor ever in the whole course of this life does this discerning alternation cease. The hand of our most clement Redeemer always strikes and spares by turns, in accordance with His perception of what is conducive to the winning of eternal salvation. 3, 4-6. My skin and my flesh he hath made old, he hath broken all my bones. These words make sense when they are brought down from the head to the members.f For our Saviour, when He lit up the world by His bodily presence, did not, like humankind, waste away in the old age of sins. Not even in the Passion, even if you take the words literally, were His bones broken, though, as the Gospel of John assures us, the Jewish party demanded this of Pilate: That the bodies might not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day (for that was a great sabbath day), they besought Pilate that their legs (those of Christ and the men crucified with Him) might be broken. And they broke the legs of the first and of the second. But after they were come to Jesus, when they saw that he was dead, they did not break his legs (John 19, 31-33). This, John says, was done that Cf. Ps. 11, 9. Cf. 2 Kgs. 1, 20. c  Cf. Wisd. 2, 8-9. d  Cf. Eph. 1, 4. e  Cf. Rom. 8, 29. f  i.e. they are applicable not to the head (Christ) but to the members (the church). a 

b 

242

1.

III, 1-3 (17.) – III, 4-6 (3.)

2.

3.

the scripture might be fulfilled: You shall not break a bone of him (John 19, 36).a He clearly has ‘skins’ in His church,b as in the ancient tabernacle of Moses, rams’ skins dyed red, or violet coloured like the sky.c The rams were the apostles, leaders of the Lord’s flock, dyed red with the martyrdoms they enduredd and the blood they shed at the last. There were also among Christ’s disciples other men of less robust build, who were all the same protected beneath the shade of the examples given by the apostles, and given courage by them to love rewards on high. There were women too, soft in sex and in constancy, just as the flesh is softer than the skin. But all these, when the Lord was arrested, ‘leaving Him, fled’;e they did not stay with the newness of life, in which the apostle tells us to walk,f but for the moment cleaved to the contagion of the old. This is what is meant by My skin and my flesh he hath made old, as much as to say: When God my Father handed me over to the Passion, not just the weaker brethren but those too who seemed rather more robust in the faith, and who had been renewed in the spirit of their mind,g were a second time infected by the old lethargy of disbelief. God is said to have done this not because He personally hurls men into sin, but because He seems to the untutored to do what He is unwilling to prevent being done. Christ, however, makes His point more explicitly when He repeats:h He hath broken all my bones. This is the same as if He said clearly: ‘Those who were the bones of my body, the foundations, that is, of my church, were broken, that is, they wavered away from the faith when, from the mouth of the very head and chief of the apostles, a denial slipped out,i though his mind remained unshaken in his resolution to love me.’ In these words He clearly indicates Cf. Exod. 12, 46 and Num. 9, 12. i.e. though He does not have ‘skin’ Himself. c  Cf. Exod. 25, 5; 26, 14. d  William seems to be thinking of tortures preceding their deaths. e  Cf. Matt. 26, 56. f  Cf. Rom. 6, 4. g  Cf. Eph. 4, 23. h  The allusion is apparently to Isa. 38, 13, regarded by Christian exegesis as foretelling the Passion. i  Cf. Matt. 26, 70-5. a 

b 

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the panic of the disciples, who, at the time of the Passion, were daunted by the crisis, and resolved to flee; looking to their temporal safety,a they dispersed where each could. But another reasonable way of taking the words is to say that the church reproaches, or rather laments, the daily lapses of her people, who, after their crimes have been washed away by baptism, are still sprinkled with the old dirt of their negligence. It is quite clear, and needs no stressing, that, as is normal in Holy Scripture, renewal is to be understood in a good sense, oldness in a bad. But I add for good measure a piece of evidence from the apostle: Stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, who was created according to God (Col. 3, 9-10). The disciple who leaned on the Lord’s bosomb proclaims that not only the weak but even the very highest are tarnished by the stain of this ‘oldness’: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves (1 John 1, 8). Our Saviour, then, is complaining in a spirit of compassion that everyone in the church is still trying to rival the errors of old sins, and that no one is free of all guilt: all men sin, and need the grace of God. They may sin unequally, but they are equally in need of God’s grace, so that everyone ought to say with good reason: I have grown old amongst all my enemies (Ps. 6, 8), that is, amongst evil spirits; if by sinning I imitate their ‘oldness’, it is no wonder if I am punished along with them, unless the grace of God comes to my aid. this too: Because I was silent my bones grew old; whilst I cried out all the day long (Ps. 31, 3). For so long as a man maintains an ungratefulc silence and neglects to confess his sins, all the strength of his apparent virtues wastes away, even though his conscience, tormented by the memory of his crimes, cries out at all hours. The skin of Christ signifies, as I said,d the highest men in the church, who shelter the flesh, that is the vulgar multitude, under the bower of their preaching and the example they set. The bones, that support the skin and flesh, can be taken to be the princes and As opposed to their eternal salvation. Peter: cf. John 13, 25. c  Contrast the ‘thankful silence’ of III, 25-28, 1. d  Apparently in III, 4-6, 2 (III, 251-258) (rather different). a 

b 

244

4.

5.

6.

III, 4-6 (3.-8.)

7.

8.

noblemen of the world, who prop up the preachers and the commons by the shield of their strength and the largesse of their munificence. Princes often become well-established; but noblemen are very often ‘broken’, because what they habitually do has virtually become their nature: the more a man swells up with wealth, the emptier he grows of virtue.a Morally speaking, the soul, which was breathed into man by God,b bewails the length of her sojourn . This is why when our first parents had slipped and fallen into doing what was forbidden, God gave them garments of skins,c so that, as skins come from dead animals, the thought of mortality might never be expunged from their minds. The soul therefore grows angry with all the years she has passed in this body, made up as it is of skin, flesh and bones, and is continually filled with longing as she reflects on the way she will be changed and renewed in heaven. For so long as she is in the body she is absent from God, at whose side alone she desires to be stationed, for whose service alone she knows she has been placed in this body. If the skin and flesh of her body were never shaken, if her bones were not shattered and continually broken, the unimpaired vigour of her dwelling would in some degree bring consolation to the longing soul who inhabits it. But as she is straitened by the frequent ailments of her flesh and the throng of her sufferings, she desires to take on the wings of a dove and fly, and be at restd where God, whom she now awaits, may make her safe from faintheartedness of spirit and the storms .e *** It is noteworthy that these verses which I have cited from the start of the alphabet begin in the Hebrew with aleph and beth, A similar phrase appears at I, 9, 8. Cf. Gen. 2, 7. c  Cf. Gen. 3, 21. d  Cf. Ps. 54, 7. e  Supplying (exempli gratia) uitae. But far more is missing (as a result of loss of folios in manuscript B). When we resume, William is rounding off his discussion of III, 1-6, the verses that are marked aleph and beth in the Vulgate (see III, prol., 1 n.). I was wrong to mark the big lacuna after the end of this paragraph in the Latin text (III, 334). We can get some idea of what is missing in William from Paschasius 3, 362-503. a 

b 

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the one translated ‘teaching’, the other ‘house’.a One does indeed require much teaching to plumb the mysteries of such an abyss, let alone expound them. Anyone who comes to understand them will (so long as his life is not a variance with his understanding) have a house not made with hands on earth, but the Jerusalem on high which we await in heaven.b 3, 7-9. Ghimel. He hath built against me round about, that I may not get out; he hath made my fetter heavy. Yea, and when I cry and entreat, he hath shut out my prayer. He hath shut up my ways with square stones, he hath turned my paths upside down. Here Jeremiah wraps up together his own woes and those of the people as a whole. When the Babylonian army was besieging the city and had built fortifications opposite it, the citizens of Jerusalem found it difficult, or rather impossible, to get out. The prophet himself, who was openly forecasting destruction if the city were not surrendered, had been thrown into chains by the princes, who accused him before the king on the grounds that his words demoralised the townspeople and enfeebled their resolve.c Their disaster was made worse because, as a result of their monstrous assaults on religious practice, God the creator, in the severity of His wrath, forbade the prophet from presuming to pray for them. If he did, his words would be carried off on the winds, and of a surety he would not be heard. Do not (He said) take to thee supplication and praise for this people: for I will not hear thee (Jer. 7, 16). So the wrath of God pressed on them within, and the fortified castles barred their way without. These were constructed of square stones to avoid them readily collapsing; if the Jews thought of going on to the offensive, any sally would be foiled—and if they judged flight necessary, any way out would be closed off. Here we may contemplate with wonder the mystic meanings of Holy Scripture. The two extremities of these verses fit the Jewish people and the church, while the middle parts fit Christ and Cf. I, 1, 1 and I, 2, 1. Cf. 2 Cor. 5, 1. c  Cf. Jer. 32, 2-3. a 

b 

246

1.

2.

3.

III, 4-6 (8.) – III, 7-9 (5.)

4.

5.

the prophet: the Jews and the prophet historically, Christ and the church allegorically.a The extremities are: He hath built against me round about, that I may not get out. He hath shut up my ways with square stones, he hath turned my paths upside down. My explanation of these words above related to the Jewish people. Now I shall discuss the ‘church’ meaning with the brevity at which I aim. It was the intention of God the Father to chastise His Son’s church with scourges and make her fit for Him as a bride not having spot or wrinkle;b and it was with His permission that the ferocious Gentiles brought such wars on the church that they did not neglect any kind of device to prevent her spreading her branches over the wide world. Read the passions of the martyrs, read the histories of the ancients, and you will see that no sort of malice was passed over. Often the brunt was taken as much by Christians who denied their faith as by those who maintained it. You will find that when tortures failed of their intended effect, the church was (as it seemed to her enemies) shut up or turned upside down by cunning blandishments and elaborate philosophical disputations. For the square stones, in my view, mean the teachings of the philosophers. When stones are squared off, they are polished to give them a shine, and so that from every angle they look to sit well on their foundations. In the same way, philosophers fit their doctrines together with a view to appropriate expression and persuasiveness. They are clever in discovering arguments, and their style is brilliant.c By these two means of giving a colour to their work, they dazzle the eye, with the result that whatever they say seems to square with the truth. The most acute of them were the Academics, who laid down that man can comprehend nothing certain: whatever the topic, they argued on both sides. Their teaching for a  The ‘extremities’ of the lemma (‘He hath built … get out’ and ‘He hath shut … down’) are discussed historically in §§ 1-2 (Jewish people and prophet) and allegorically in §§ 4-5 (church). The ‘middle parts’ (‘He hath made … my prayer’) are discussed, again allegorically, in § 6, where the earlier historical treatment of the prophet is alluded to. b  Cf. Eph. 5, 27. c  William employs the rhetorical distinction between inventio (‘invention’) and elocutio (‘expression’).

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the most part made against the church, which promises certain forgiveness in this world for the penitent, and certain glory in the future for those who deserve it. She at that time by God’s grace so overcame all the turmoil of martyrdoms, so defeated all the tricks of captious sophisms, that she is now entitled to say: When I called upon him, the God of my justice heard me: when I was in distress, thou hast enlarged me (Ps. 4, 2). So too in olden days the sons of Israel: the more they were oppressed by the Egyptians, the more they battled on, pre-figuring the church,a and grew strong so that their progeny could succeed them.b The middle parts of these verses are: He hath made my fetter heavy. Yea, and when I cry and entreat, he hath shut out my prayer. The reader will know from what I said earlier how this fits the prophet; let us now see its relevance to Christ. For though ‘fetters’ are properly speaking chains for the feet,c they can reasonably be understood to be the bonds by which our Saviour deigned to be bound for our sake. He allowed wicked hands to take control of Him, and His divine power was for the moment held in check, so that the mystery of the Passion might be fulfilled. He therefore gave His arms to be bound, so as to restrict the liberty of the hands of Adam, which our first parent had shamelessly stretched out to the apple against the Creator’s order. Further, His prayer was shut out when He cried and entreated: Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me (Matt. 26, 39). It was in fact impossible for something not to happen that before the ages He had, willing what the Father willed, arranged to take place at the end of the ages.d But it was fitting that even this prayer should not go unspoken, to make it known to the world that He truly had human feelings within Him, and also to take away the fear of despair from His faithful ones, if they chanced to feel alarm at the thought of death.

a  b 

sage.

Cf. II, 1, 4. Cf. Exod. 1, 7. This seems to be the sense of William’s variation on that pas-

Cf. Isidore, Etym. 5, 27, 7. This contrast is found in several passages of Gregory the Great, In euang. (e.g. 25, 6). c 

d 

248

6.

III, 7-9 (5.-8.)

7.

8.

It is also intimated here that, if a man is not swiftly listened to,a he should not give vent to haughty complaints, considering that even the prayer of the only-begotten Son of God was not listened tob—for the good of the whole world. These words too are applicable to the soul, either when she is still shut up inside the prison of the body, or when she is under pressure to leave the flesh. For when she adds iniquity upon iniquity, she obstructs her own entrance, preventing her ‘getting out’ freely and coming into the justice of God.c On the other hand, the just man can say: I walked at large, because I have sought after thy commandments (Ps. 118, 45). But when she tries to lift herself on her elbow (so to speak) after the long sleep of inactivity, she at once falls back again under the weight of her sins, so that she rightly says: My iniquities are gone over my head: as a heavy burden they are become heavy upon me (Ps. 37, 5). The soul of the just man, on the other hand, freed from this fetter by the grace of God, proclaims exultantly to Him who freed her: Thou hast set my feet in a spacious place (Ps. 30, 9). But if the sinful soul, desiring to be rid of her exigencies, ever does send forth sighs in the form of prayers to heaven, her cry is shut out from the sight of God, because her pleas are full of sluggish languor and darkened by the clouds of past sins. There are also four kinds of sinning,d with which the soul shuts up for herself the paths of salvation as though with square stones. Not struggling against what the flesh or the Devil suggest, she falls into taking delight in it; soon, passing over to the act of sinning, she for a long time wantons in the slough of vice with unhappy persistence. Alternatively, we may understand by the squaring of stones the four ‘affections’ of the soul, about whose differences and effects the philosophical schools make a great noise. They are hope and fear, joy and grief.e These feelings the soul uses well when i.e. when he prays. There may be an allusion to Jer. 7, 16, cited in § 2. c  Cf. Ps. 68, 28. d  See I, 1, 10 with n. e  Paschasius, the immediate source here, refers to Vergil, Aen. 6, 733 ‘hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent gaudentque’, ‘hence [i.e. as a result of their bodies] their fears and desires, their griefs and joys’. a 

b 

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she hopes by God’s grace to be able to have a concern for good capacities.a If she possesses them, she fears dutifully that she may lose them; she rejoices when she obtains them; if by some chance she loses them by her own negligence, she is grieved. But the soul misuses these ‘affections’ when she twists round to the charm of vice all that I said of her concern for good capacities. Desire playing the pimp, she does not despair of attaining it,b and when it is attained she is anxious and afraid of losing it. And, to be brief, you may understand the same of her joy and grief. By these means her paths are turned upside down, for downhill and easy is the way that takes her to hell; and by herself—for she has deservedly been deprived of God’s grace—she can by no effort ascend to heaven.c All these things God is said to have done, not (as I have often said and as is clear to all in their right minds)d because He imposes any sin on any person, but because by a hidden judgement He refrains from punishing sins. The same words are appropriate to the soul. When she is already gasping in the death throes, and fate is pressing her to yield to nature, yet the prison of the conscience straitens her. She is terrified to go forth and see Him whom she scorned, for the chain of her sins is heavy upon her and prevents her going forth freely. From her heart she redoubles her cries of supplication to God; but her prayers are shut out from God’s ears, for she had been obstinate in disobeying His precepts. Before the eyes of the mind are paraded all the sins she has committed by suggestion,e by taking delight, by acting and (worse) by persisting;f and by the ‘squaring’ of this wall all access is barred off to her. Thus all her hopes are overthrown, all the paths of pity are destroyed; and she is led on the leash of captivity to the place where she can be torSee Prol., 9 n. The charm of vice, it seems (hence my emendation to singular illecebram). c  Cf. Vergil, Aen. 6, 126-9. d  Cf. II, 1, 1 with n. e  i.e. ‘by giving in to evil suggestions’ (cf. II, 3, 4 ‘reason was conferred on me by God to enable me to repel harmful promptings as they assail me’) rather than good ones (cf. § 12). Evil promptings would come from the flesh or the Devil (§ 8), as well as, or rather than, from other people. f  See on I, 1, 10. a 

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mented by dire tortures and the everlasting fire of conscience. This is vividly expressed by the letter ghimel, which means ‘retribution’. For a soul is subjected to deserved retribution if she is afflicted with perpetual punishment for a passing fault which she would never give up if she could remain here for ever. Let us then return at last to the heart,a and while the Judge keeps His sentence in suspense, while He waits, not uttering His will, let us ourselves break through the hedge of our sins, which, in the words of the prophet, divide between us and God.b Let us wish rather that He Himself hedge us with merciful severity, and not let us be sent headlong into outrageous behaviour, as He says through Hosea: Behold I will hedge up thy ways with thorns, and I will hedge them up with a wall, that you may not find your lovers (Hos. 2, 6-7). Let us go forth abroad,c and not as it were hide gold in our bosom,d but come before His face with confession,e that He may lighten the bundles that oppress,f and place upon us His yoke, which is sweet, and His burden, which is light.g And although praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner,h let us cry to Him constantly, pray ceaselessly, so that our voice may break into the ears of His pity with an importunate cry, so that, if not because He is our friend, at least because of our importunity He may rise and give us in His mercy what we need.i And because we have not stood up against an evil prompting, but rather have gone along with it and rushed into wicked acts, and positively nurtured wickedness by falling into the foul habit of shameful actions,j let us now by His grace put our minds to a good prompting: let us be eager to pursue virtues, and sacrifice to God not just the head but Cf. Isa. 46, 8. Cf. Isa. 59, 2. c  Cf. Gen. 4, 8. d  William seems to misremember Job 23, 10 and 12. e  Cf. Ps. 94, 2. f  Cf. Isa. 58, 6. g  Cf. Matt. 11, 30. h  Cf. Ecclus. 15, 9; praise of God is presumably thought of as being an essential aspect of prayer to Him. i  Cf. Luke 11, 8. j  See I, 1, 10 with n. a 

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the tail of the offering.a For a man sacrifices the tail of the offering if he makes it his concern to carry the performance of good works through to the end of his life. Because the paths of our virtues are turned upside down in us, let us ask Him to turn them again,b that we may in our hearts direct the way for the Lord, and make straight the paths for our God.c 3, 10-12. Daleth. He is become to me a bear lying in wait, a lion in secret places. He hath overturned my paths, and hath broken me in pieces; he hath made me desolate. He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for his arrow. By means of a metaphor, Jeremiah introduces the voice of the city bewailing her fortunes. On many occasions since David made her the capital of his kingdom she had been struck by the shock of war: by Shishak king of the Egyptians, under Rehoboam son of Solomon; by Jeroboam king of Israel, under Amaziah king of Judah; by the nobleman Antiochus shortly before the time of the Maccabees; under Judas Maccabaeus, by Antiochus Eupator; by Antiochus the Pious, under Hircanus son of Simon; under Aristobulus by Pompey; under Antigonus by Sosius.d But thanks to Nebuchadnezzar and Titus she was felled by a more memorable calamity: she was not just invaded, but destroyed and levelled with the ground. The first of these men God through Ezekiele calls His servant, and (more remarkably) ‘the dove’, this because he perhaps laid siege with straightforward motives, to avenge wrongs done to God, and won God’s favour at the cost of much sweat expended by him and his men. I leave God to determine the motive; but the result is quite clear to see. Like a bear or lion, blood-thirstiest of beasts, he consumed on the spot or took off to Babylon all the fine things he could (as it were) gnaw with his teeth or scrape together with his claws. For a time it was a fair fight; he did battle with the sword at close quarters. But when he thought he was getCf. e.g. Lev. 3, 9; Deut. 28, 13. Alluding (perhaps) to Lam. 3, 3. c  Cf. Isa. 40, 3. d  William has culled these instances from the Latin Josephus. e  In fact Jeremiah (25, 9 and 38). a 

b 

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ting nowhere like this, he began to operate at long range, with engines, javelins and the arrow that comes unexpectedly from afar, stretching a cloud of this artillery across the sky and making hay of the townspeople. Still, the words ‘set me as a mark for his arrow’ could be brought into connection with God summoning to the siege not only the Babylonians but the neighbouring nations too, Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites, so that they all raced to the destruction of Jerusalem as to some mark set in the midst. For Ezekiela reproaches those nations too with taking pleasure in the current overturning, taxing them with being envious of the good times of the past. With all these nations exerting themselves to the full, the city was ‘broken in pieces’ and desolated, and all the paths round about were overturned and heaped with corpses. Allegorically, the words are spoken by the body and the head, as they bear witness to the human race of the Devil’s violence against them. The Old Enemy is justly given the names of the fiercest animals: he is ugly and shaggy like a bear, violent like a lion, bloodthirsty like both. Similar to him were the bear and lion which seized and carried off a lamb in their teeth from the cavesb of David, though soon they were pursued and strangled by him, and gave up their plunder unharmed.c For time after time the Enemy, who constantly changes his shape, leads off innocents from holy church, the sheepfold of the true David, carrying them away in his gaping jaws; but if she prays and Christ gives His aid, he willy nilly vomits them out untouched—when they repent. therefore became a bear and a lion to Christ and the church: he hooked Him off (as he thought) to death (this is the correct word to used of a bear’s violence), and coaxed away many in the church to renounce their faith.e And all this ‘lying in wait’ and ‘in secret Cf. (it seems) Ezek. 36, 4-5. One expects rather ‘flocks’ or ‘folds’. William is perhaps influenced by the lemma (‘secret places’); cf. below, § 9 (‘like a lion in his cave’). But it is true that David frequented caves (1 Sam. 22, 1 and 24, 3-9). c  Cf. 1 Kgs. 17, 34-5. d  William uses arpagare of a bear in VD 1, 19, 2. e  This is presumably the Devil acting as a lion. But it does not sound very leonine behaviour, and William glosses over the point. a 

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places’: the Devil never publishes his cunning moves abroad, but practices deceit behind some appearance of reason or allurement.a It was under a show of religious fervour that he forced the Jews, anxious as they were to protect their fathers’ traditions, to feel envy and drag Christ off to the Cross. For if, says the apostle, they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2, 8). As for the Gentiles, did he not deceive them too under an appearance of truth and a cloak of reason, when they regarded it as folly to reject a superstition that was becoming ever more revered over so many successive generations, and worship instead a man whom the Jews had just crucified? Even some churchmen were attracted by this apparently reasonable consideration, and defected from the faith. To this are relevant the apostle’s words: We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness (1 Cor. 1, 23). Nor is it absurd to see in the lion, king of beasts, the head of all the damned, the Devil (of whom is said: He is king over all the children of pride (Job 41, 25); and also: Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about (1 Pet. 5, 8)), and in the bear all his members. For the bear has his greatest strength in his forelegs and loins, but is weak in the head.b That is what the chief men among the Gentiles were like at that time: strong in their nervous eloquence and their abundantc pleasures, but ‘nerveless’ in the head. For the Devil is a staff of a reedd to all who put their hope in him; anyone who leans on him will fall and be destroyed. But all the persecutions men have brought on the church by their powerful eloquence and worldly display one can read of in the annals. The paths of Christ were overturned and broken when His feet, that is, some of the disciples (of whom is said: How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad tidings of good things, glad tidings of peace! (Rom. 10, 15)), diverging from the path of faith lenocinii (‘allurement’) seems a strange partner for rationis (‘reason’). A noun parallel to pretextu (‘appearance’) may have fallen out. b  Cf. Job 40, 11 (loins); Isidore, Etym. 12, 2, 22; and below, § 9. c  Fluxu (lit. ‘outflow’) looks forward to the explanation of this passage of Job in § 9 below. d  Cf. 4 Kgs. 18, 21; Ezek. 29, 6. a 

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9.

because they did not understand the mysteries of His body and blood, went back, and walked no more with him (John 6, 67). For all the apostles who were close at His side before the Passion deserted Him at the Passion, when leaving Him they all fled.a So too churchmen. They normally kept to the track of orthodox belief. But if ever the foot of the faith slipped and they went off the road, they made their mother desolate, though they should have brought her honour and help, ornament and comfort. Now as to the words He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for his arrow, everyone can see they refer to the Lord’s Cross. For that is how God the Father by permitting, and the Devil by inciting,b and the Jews by crucifying, exposed Christ to the arrows of abuse, so that they all, as if bending the bow of their tongues, wagged their heads as they passed by and said: Vah, he that destroyeth the temple of God, and in three days rebuildeth it. In like manner also the chief priests, mocking, said one to another: He saved others; can he not save himself? If he be the king of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we believe him (Matt. 27, 4042; Mark 15, 31). This is the sign of which is said: The Lord shall set up a sign unto the nations far off, and shall assemble the dispersed of Israel (Isa. 11, 12). And Simeon: Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted (Luke 2, 34). The church too was set as a mark for the arrow when one group tore her apart with the darts of slandering words, while another tormented her with strokes of the whip, so that the apostle was right to say: We are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men (1 Cor. 4, 9). We can understand here tooc the feelings of a soul in haste to leave the body, which realises the artifices of the Enemy only when she finds she cannot get out. As I have mentioned before,d he has strong arms and loins like a bear because those he cannot ensnare by his show of strength, as it were with his arms, he causes to become licentious by the outflow of lusts from his loins. But he has Cf. Matt. 26, 56. The Jews, that is (cf. above, III, 10-12, 5). c  i.e. as in III, 7-9, 10 (III, 448-449). d  III, 10-12, 6. a 

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a weak head, for anyone who by the grace of God stands up to his first assaults, by that same grace comes off an easy winner. At the hour of her going out, too, the Devil plots against the soul ‘in secret places’ like a lion in his cave. He plots to seize her, after having for a long time lured her towards him by means of her faults. Then, poor thing, she has everything before the eyes of her mind, bare and exposed, though now they are kept secret from her. Hence the Lord, under the image of Jerusalem, laments the forgetfulness of the soul, saying: And that in this day, the things that are to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes (Luke 19, 42). For, drunk on the juices of the world, she forgets to think now upon the hour of her final going out, at which will be rigorously weighed not only the big sins that she had forgotten, so numerous were they, but also those she thought tiny or non-existent. And she will be desolate when she is abandoned by life and its pleasures, and the God whom she scorned will overturn the paths by which she should have gone up to heaven. He will bend the bow of His wrath, and set her as a mark for His arrow, on the day when it will be open to every wicked spirit at their whim to launch all the arrows of accusation at her: one charging her with arrogance, another with wantonness, one with greed, another with avarice, and so on. Of this the Lord : For the days shall come upon thee, and straiten thee on every side (Luke 19, 43). But we can as so oftena explain the bow as standing for the threat of hidden judgement, since, when, as often, He threatens yet neglects to strike, He stops in mercy after bending His bow in severity. Hence in the psalm is said to Him: Thou hast shewn thy people hard things; thou hast made us drink the wine of sorrow. Thou hast given a warning b to them that fear thee: that they may flee from before the bow (Ps. 59, 5-6). For when in this world He temporally scourges His church, He gives a warning, advising her

non insolenter is used, as e.g. in Augustine, In Ps. 87, 9 (p. 1214, 23), to mean ‘in the usual way’; see TLL s.v. insolenter 1930, 29-39. b  The Latin is significationem, ‘indication’. a 

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to flee by penitence from the final judgement that is still hidden from her. Now in Holy Scripture we read of many kinds of arrow. There are arrows sharp, into the hearts of the king’s enemies (Ps. 44, 6). There are the sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals that lay waste (Ps. 119, 4). There are as arrows in the hand of the mighty, so the children of them that have been shaken (Ps. 126, 4). There is also a loathsome kind of arrow, to counter which the apostle advises us to take the shield of faith, that we may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one (Eph. 6, 16). This type is shot to do evil, while the others are turned towards the good. We understand by the arrows of the mighty God Holy Scripture, which pricks to penitence the hearts of the enemies of the king, so as to make them friends instead of enemies. And this ‘with coals that lay waste’, that is, with the examples of the holy, who fire the minds of neighbours to emulate them if they are cold in the good, and consume all the noxious humour in them with the flame of God’s love. These coals are the children of them that shake, that is the successors of the apostles, who, driven away from preaching to the Jews because of their lack of faith, shook off the dust of their feet against them,a and on the church of the Gentilesb poured forth the arrows of the mighty, that is the preaching of the Gospel. Of this the church too says in the Song of Songs: I am wounded with charity (S. of S. 2, 5 = 5, 8 VL). The soul therefore is set as a mark for the arrow, because she is exposed either to the good arrow, in accordance with the grace of God, for salvation, or to the bad, because of her deserts, for destruction. All these things are intimated by means of the letter daleth, which is translated ‘fear’ (a different rendering from the one I gave in the first alphabet).c For who could think of, let alone explain, the degree of fear when the soul is in this life afflicted with compunction at the thought of God’s severity, or when she is compelled to go out with torments hanging over her? Cf. Acts 13, 51. William takes excussorum as a noun (see TLL s.v.). Loosely expressed. c  Cf. Ambrose, In Ps. 118, 4, 1; contrast I, 4, 1 (tabularum). a 

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In the meantime, therefore, she will be well advised to feel fear humbly in the present, that she may to her profit deserve to avoid it in the future. 3, 13-15. He. He hath shot into my reins the daughters of his quiver. I am made a derision to all the people, and their song all the day long. He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath inebriated me with wormwood. The first verse, taken literally, laments the woe of the citizens of Jerusalem. It was into their reins that the enemy from Babylon shot the arrows, many and wicked, with which he pierced the softer sex and the vulnerable young. This was absolutely worthy retribution from God: since in peacetime, in the words of this same prophet, every one neighed after his neighbour’s wife (Jer. 5, 8), the slaughter was the more widespread because people consorted illicitly in hope of children to follow them.a By ‘the daughters of the quiver’ may also be understood the hidden judgements of God’s dispensation, as a result of which the wicked in this world generally harass the wicked, just as Nebuchadnezzar, a man ignorant of the rites due to God, harassed the sinful Jews. The second verse reiterates the personal tribulation of the prophet. He had foretold to the townspeople, and openly asserted, that the Babylonian army was on the verge of arriving to destroy the city. Yet the Babylonians put off their grievous siege until the final year of King Zedekiah,b and even during it were troubled by many perplexities, the townsfolk making forays against them and throwing everything into the fray in their despair of a good outcome. Success fed their self-confidence: they even felt free to mock Jeremiah himself, as if they had overcome their dangers already. More, they kept him tighter bound,c and made mock of his captivity with jesting songs throughout the city. For it often happens

a  i.e. there were more children to be killed (and more justly) because of the illicit sex in peacetime. b  The eleventh (and necessarily last): Josephus [Gr.] 10, 135. What follows seems to be drawn from William’s imagination (cf. Josephus [Gr.] 10, 132-133). c  Cf. Jer. 38, 6 (compared with 32, 3).

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that the base commonsa follow the lead of their betters and find it a consolation for their own perils if everyone is in the same straits. The third verse is a general lament for what befell the prophet and the townspeople. For when the siege was lifted, Jeremiah too, though released from his bonds, felt a compassion that extended to the whole state, and shared in his mind all that the bulk of the people were suffering in the body. But who could do justice to the bitterness of what the unfortunates suffered, the killings and the chains? The scale and degree of it drove them almost out of their minds—for that seems to be what is meant by ‘inebriated me with wormwood’. In an earlier passage of the prophet, too, the Lord had threatened: Behold I will feed this people with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink (Jer. 9, 15), meaning by this great bitterness and bitter greatness of tribulation, or rather the gall of unbelief, which even today embitters the Jews against the faith of Christ. Mad they are, pitiful, drunk on the wormwood of disbelief, never softened by the passage of time, amenable to no reasoning, refuted by no written word. As a result, they react furiously to the sweet message of Christ, setting their mouth against heaven,b and trailing their heart on the ground. Accordingly, let us judge from the way Jews behave today the reliability of ancient historians on the topic of the obstinacy of that people; not the kindnesses of God, nor His threats, nor His punishments, could stop them repaying the gifts they had received from God by going so far as to crucify His only begotten Son when He came to them, the Lord Jesus. The meaning of the first verse moves from head to body:c He hath shot into my reins the daughters of his quiver. By means of the reinsd is produced the progeny [propago] of the human race. The reins of Christ were the apostles; they led to the procreation [propagata est] of the church, of which, under the guise of the vineyard, is said in the psalm: It stretched forth its branches unto the Cf. Vergil, Aen. 1, 149. Cf. Ps. 72, 9. c  As William proceeds to show, the verse is applicable first to Christ, then to the church. d  i.e. the loins (i.e. the genitalia). a 

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sea, and its boughs [propagines] unto the river (Ps. 79, 12), of course because the breadth of the church, to which the apostles gave rise, embraced all places on land and took over as well all the bays of the sea. Further, the more assiduously vine shoots [propagines] are cut back, the more fruitfully they sprout back again.a In the same way, when the apostles were cut away by death, it cannot be expressed how many branches grew to replace them in the church, in the shape of wholly admirable and praiseworthy men. Into these reins, that is, into the apostles and their successors, God shot the arrows of His quiver. By the quiver of God may, as I said above,b be understood His hidden dispensation, by which He permits good men to suffer tribulation in this world, and by which the psalmist complained he was being afflicted: For thy arrows are fastened in me: and thy hand hath been strong upon me (Ps. 37, 3) Alternatively, we may understand Holy Scripture, which by its words throws arrows of inmost compunction into the hard hearts of men. To cite the psalmist again, he longed to be pierced by them: Pierce thou my flesh with thy fear: for I am afraid of thy judgments (Ps. 118, 120). Now who is there who does not know that the church has been wounded by arrows of both types? In the persecution she was assailed by manifold darts of tribulation, while in peacetime she was pricked by the arrows of God’s love. In both circumstances, she had God’s help to protect her from being broken by torture in time of persecution, or softened by the allurements of peace. The two following verses apply equally to Christ and to the church.c For Christ was made a derision to all the people when after His crucifixion they that passed by wagged their heads, jeeringly making Him ‘their song’, when they said: Vah, he that destroyeth the temple of God, and in three days rebuildeth it. In like manner, as I said not long ago,d also the priests mocking, said with Cf. I, 22, 3 on vines and their pruning. A propago is properly a slip used for layering (R. A. B. Mynors on Vergil, Georg. 2, 26). It is the upward growing shoot that is pruned. b  Cf. III, 10-12, 13. c  Or perhaps ‘equally apply to Christ and the church’, i.e. just like the preceding one (see § 5 n.). But III, 16-18, 1 (III, 761) ‘pariter’ points to the other sense. d  Cf. III, 10-12, 8. a 

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the scribes one to another: He saved others; can he not save himself? (Matt. 27, 39 and 42; Mark 15, 29 and 31). And this ‘all the day’ of the Passion: they laboured both in the morning,a accusing Him before Pilate, and in the eveningb sorely abusing Him. Then comes: He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath inebriated me with wormwood, no doubt referring to the hostile Jews, either because, as I said, they were carried away into bitterly insulting Him, or because, when He complained that He was thirsty (as He was: to be believed by mankind), they tried to give Him wine mingled with myrrh to drink.c But the church too was made a derision to all the people when the Gentiles and Jews, united in hatred of her, derided her with prodigious taunts, and also ‘their song’ when, as we read in church history, Maximinus caused the production of forged annals slandering Christ and the Christians,d while certain others, labouring over books as a record for posterity, vomited up many an insult. Most celebrated of these were Porphyry the pseudo-philosopher,e and the emperor Julian the unbeliever. They thus brought it about that the church was for the time ‘filled with bitterness’ internally, while among nonbelievers she was ‘inebriated with wormwood’, that is, she was the object of bitterly abusive raillery. Yet whatever her enemies’ ravings, Christ nobly overcame the injuries done to Him and rose again on the third day, while the church quelled the persecutions, sometimes bringing actual persecutors into her embrace. This is signified by the letter he that heads all these words: the translation is ‘I live’ and ‘is’. For though Christ died and was buried, He now lives in the glory of the Father, and as He promised is with His church even to the consummation of the world (Matt. 28, 20). The wise reader will, so far as he is able, find out for himself how to adapt what I have been saying to the best interests of the soul. For in this life she experiences, if she is good, the wounds Cf. e.g. Matt. 27, 1. Yet He was crucified at the third hour (Mark 15, 25). c  Cf. Mark 15, 23. d  Cf. Rufinus, Hist. 9, 5, 1. e  Cf. esp. Rufinus, Hist. 6, 19, 2-8. a 

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of charity,a and if she is bad, the fiery and accursed darts of the Devil—and hence the darts of accusation at her departure.b As a result, it is fair to say that in this life she lies open to the mockery of evil spirits, when, though she tries at times to rise to heaven, she immediately slips back, driven by her sins, into the filth of vice. At her going forth, too, she is the victim of their jeering laughter, when the wicked plunderers carry off to punishment the prey they have been tracking for so long, singing a funeral dirge, or rather raising a howl.c She is filled then with the bitterness of torments and inebriated with wormwood; shipwrecked and desperate, she is tortured by having no hope of escape, the very worst of all penalties. 3, 16-18. Vau. He hath broken my teeth one by one, he hath fed me with ashes. And my soul is rejected; I have forgotten good things. And I said: My end and my hope is perished from the Lord. These words are said equally of Jeremiah and of all the besieged townspeople. They had all run out of food. As supplies of what they should have been chewing with their teeth had failed, it was no wonder if the use of those teeth had been blunted and dulled. Further, if they found some slight quantity of meal, hurriedly preparedd and thrown on the coals to make hearth cakes,e they were so hungry that they snatched at it and ate it ashes and all. Exhausted by starvation, they gave up their sweet lives; in the very moment when they gasped their breath away, forgetting the good things of the past and thinking only of the dire dangers of the present, they declared with such strength as remained to them that they had nothing left. Allegorically, Christ’s teeth were broken at His Passion, when all the apostles fell away from firmness of faith. For they are His Cf. the Vetus Latina reading at S. of S. 2, 5 = 5, 8 ‘uulnerata caritate ego sum’, ‘I am wounded with charity’ (see e.g. III, 10-12, 12). b  Cf. III, 10-12, 10. c  Cf. VD 1, 31 (death of King Eadwig). d  confectam could mean ‘ground’, but more preparation would be needed before the meal was put on the fire. e  Cf. 3 Kgs. 17, 13. a 

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teeth, by which all nations have been ground up out of the hardness of disbelief and taken over into His body, the church. He, too, was fed with ashes because, as sinner and penitent, He gladly underwent many humiliations at the hands of the Jews, and at the end, for our sake, the bitterness of the Passion, a death which would soon, it was thought, reduce Him to ashes, like mortal men. He says of this in the psalm: For I did eat ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping (Ps. 101, 10); as if to say: I underwent death for the salvation of the human race as patiently as if I had been eating agreeable bread. That acceptance of one’s mortality and the remedies supplied by penitence are signified by ‘ashes’ is a clear inference from the fact that when, in the course of the yearly round, we arrive at the beginning of Lent, we sprinkle our heads with ashes. And it should be thought consonant with this that, as I said, the Passion is marked by being fed with ashes, fora our Lord and Saviour Himself more than once in the Gospels called the Passion a chalice: Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink? (Matt. 20, 22); Father, if this chalice may not pass away, but I must drink it, thy will be done (Matt. 26, 42); The chalice which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? (John 18, 11). Hence the phrase I mentioned above, I mingled my drink with weeping, that is, I underwent the harshness of the Passion precisely in order to call the mass of the human race to penitence, penitence that is made manifest by tears and sighs.b When therefore His soul left His body through the violence of the Cross, He was thought by the apostles to have forgotten His power, while the Jews reckoned that the hope He placed in God had perished. That is why, as I said before,c they mocked Him with the words: He trusted in God; let him now deliver him, if he will (Matt. 27, 43). But He Himself arranged His own Passion by a deep-laid plan,

William here seems to move from eating ashes to drinking from the chalice because of the conjunction of eating and drinking in Ps. 101, 10. b  Into Christ’s chalice, His Passion, are mixed the penitential tears of the human race. commendatur may mean not ‘made manifest’ but ‘recommended, made agreeable (to God)’. c  Cf. II, 15, 2 and III, 1-3, 3. a 

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though the apostles, being only human, were misled,a while the Jews became exalted with unfortunate presumption.b It is therefore highly appropriate that these words come under the letter vau, which is translated ‘so not he’. Though His death was received with different emotions, the faithful doubting His divinity, His enemies exulting loudly over what they saw as their victory, He assuredly was not disturbed; with the tranquillity of one looking on from a divine viewpoint, He saw in advance both why He was suffering and what benefit His suffering would bring. By dying He swallowed up our death,c and by rising again He restored life. To speak now of His body, the teeth of the church were broken when the most energetic preachers, who had taken much plunder from the Devil, often bringing over the most savage persecutors into the body of the church, were swept away by martyrdom. As a result she began to be fed with ashes, because she had to devote herself to the tears and hardship of penitence, hoping that God might turn back His gaze upon her, and calm those storms. As I said before,d she is the speaker of the highly emotional complaint Why, O Lord, hast thou retired afar off? why dost thou slight us in our wants, in the time of trouble? (Ps. 9, 22). But when the souls of the martyrs were being driven out of this world by the distresses of many tribulations, it seemed to the persecutors that God had forgotten the church, and people speculated that the hope she placed in Him had perished. What she says in the psalm is relevant to this: My tears have been my bread day and night, whilst it is said to me daily: Where is thy God? (Ps. 41, 4). Yet she knew without hesitation the hope she entertained, and waited calmly for the arrival of God’s help at the right moment. Of this she boasts in the psalm: The Lord is become a refuge for the poor: a helper in due time, in tribulation (Ps. 9, 10). Also: For the poor man shall not be forgotten to the end: the patience of the poor shall not perish for ever (Ps. 9, 19). i.e. into thinking He had lost His power. i.e. in thinking that He had lost hope. c  Cf. 1 Cor. 15, 54. d  Cf. I, 16, 6. a 

b 

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5.

6.

III, 16-18 (3.-8.)

7.

8.

Meanwhile, in case the reader is wondering, I give him advance warning that I have given different translations of the Hebrew letters from those I gave in the first alphabet.a The meaning varies according to the context; the explanation varies according to the sense of the passage in question. I shall arrange the exposition concerning the soul by saying that her teeth are the intellect, which understands what is heard, and the memory, which mulls over and assemblesb what is understood. The soul that pants for God must have both, so that she can both gladly take in God’s holy words with the ear of the body, and bring them into the memory to be agreeably reconsidered and digested. Hence, Moses figuratively (as befitted a man concerned with mysteries)c judges unclean an animal that does not chew the cud,d as being unfit for the faithful to eat, that is, to become part of the body of God’s church. For an animal that chews the cud brings back to the teeth what it had made to pass into the stomach, rejecting any harmful elements while retaining those that conduce to health. The apostle instructs us to do this with all that is written: Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. From all appearance of evil refrain yourselves (1 Thess. 5, 21-22). I think the same thing is meant, though the words are different, when it is said of the same Moses that his eyes were not dim, neither were his teeth moved (Deut. 34, 7). By the eyes, which announce within what they see outside, is to be understood the intellect, which transfers into the stomach of the memory what is heard or read outside; by the teeth, the memory, which recalls and grinds up what is consigned to it, going over it again and digesting it. These two things the soul perfect in religion is never without, nor does she ever lose them however rusted by age she may be: she will al-

Roughly speaking the letters are translated in Book One by reference to Jerome, Ep. 30, 5 and in Book Three (see III, prol., 1 n.) by reference to Ambrose, In Ps. 118. It is not clear why William gives this warning only here. b  The precise image in conuoluit is uncertain. c  figurate and mistice are synonyms in this sort of context. d  Cf. Lev. 11, 3-8 (also Deut. 14, 6-7). William ignores the complication that some ruminants are rejected because of their hooves. a 

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ways apply her intellect to the words of God, and put them into effect at the right time and place. But if a soul knows to her sorrow that she lacks them, and has at least a little concern for God, she must be fed on ashes, that is, be given over to the laments of penitence. Now, that the sprinkling of ashes befits the condition of the penitent, is (as I said above)a witnessed to by the church in accordance with the tradition of our ancestors: she sprinkles the heads of Christians with ashes at the beginning of Lent. Of this the prophet Job said many aeons ago: Therefore I reprehend myself, and do penance in dust and ashes (Job 42, 6). In accord with the words of His faithful servant is the saying of the Lord addressed to errant cities in the Gospel: If in Sidon and Tyre had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in you, they had long ago done penance in ashes and sackcloth (Matt. 11, 21). So the soul that is rejected from happiness on high and cast down into exile here is right to be anxious and to groan, since she has grown unaccustomed to good things and apparently has no remnant of good hope left. But this despair is remedied by the letter vau, which, as I said,b is translated ‘so not he’: supply the words ‘God wishes’ or ‘teaches’.c For Christ does not wish, nor did He teach by His example, that a soul wasting away in evil should immerse herself in the misery of despair, but should rather be so influenced by penitence that she does not despair of forgiveness; should so groan at her rejection by God that she knows she will be taken back if she is properly penitent; should so lament the good things she has lost that she may hope to recover them by God’s grace. Nor should she say My hope and my end is perished from the Lord, but rather My hope, O Lord, from my youth (Ps. 70, 5); Let them hope in thee all who know thee: for thou hast not forsaken them that seek thee, O Lord (Ps. 9, 11); In thee, O Lord, have I hoped, let me not be put to confusion for ever (Ps. 30, 2 = 70, 1); and finally: I cried to thee, O Lord: I said:

III, 16-18, 2. Cf. III, 16-18, 4. c  i.e. ‘So God does not wish (teach)’. a 

b 

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9.

10.

III, 16-18 (8.) – III, 19-21 (2.)

1.

2.

Thou art my hope, my portion in the land of the living (Ps. 141, 6); and many similar passages. 3, 19-21. Zain. Remember my poverty and transgression, the wormwood and the gall. I will be mindful and remember, and my soul shall languish within me. These things I shall think over in my heart, therefore will I hope. After much reiteration of complaints, the prophet finally offers a prayer to God on behalf of his fellow-citizens, in the hope of winning His pity. That this was the result of divine inspiration is shown clearly by the end of the previous verses and the start of these. The previous ones closed with the prophet apparently in complete despair. Now he has at once introduced words headed by the letter zain. This means ‘lead yourself hither’: for God is clearly warning him not to wander round the city any longer in despair, but to bring his mind back to considering the multitude of His mercies that are from the beginning of the world.a Thus inspired, he starts his prayer like this: Remember my poverty and transgression, the wormwood and the gall. Here we should note first that he puts ‘poverty’ before ‘transgression’. I do not think that we ought to take this to be the kind of poverty which many in this world suffer under harsh and crushing necessity, but the need and straitening of the mind that many do not know (or choose to forget) is in the service of their Creator. Victims of this blindness, the ordinary people of Jerusalem brought upon themselves the scourges of God by transgressing commandments from heaven. justly compares these scourges to wormwood and gall, since they seriously marred their temporal happiness in this life and fattened them up for eternal punishment; for they preferred to ascribe them to God’s injustice rather than to their own wickedness. The captives from Jerusalem are accused of this by Ezekiel: And you have said: The way of the Lord is not right (Ezek. 18, 25). Yet assuredly there were some among them who were worthy of God, men who though involved in the same woes as the rest, weighed both their own sins and those of the a 

Cf. Ps. 24, 6.

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people not superficially and casually but with attention and profit (which is to be mindful and remember), and so languished in their souls. And because they thought over their own sins and those of the community, and shed bitter and heartfelt tears for them, they hoped for forgiveness from God, drawing it by penitence from the very throne of deity. These words, like the rest since the start of the alphabet, require explaining jointly in relation both to Christ and to the church. For the Son is asking the Father to remember His poverty, by which He for the transgression of his people emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2, 7), for fear that, if faith failed in them and works of disbelief began to increase, it would seem that He had taken on that forma in vain. This is what he also calls wormwood and gall, because He was often assailed by the poisonous wit of Jewish tongues, and at the Passion was given gall to drink.b The church too has her poverty, by the word ‘wormwood’. She also has, and laments, the transgression of certain persons, which I reckon to be meant by the word ‘gall’. And that ‘wormwood’ is suitably taken of the bitterness of tribulations in the present, and ‘gall’ of the direness of the torments in hell. Though both wormwood and gall are bitter, there is sometimes a health-giving wormwood; but gall is, I think, always harmful. Thus tribulation here and now leads those who suffer it patiently through to a cure; but torture in hell causes the wretched victims agonies that lead to destruction. And so the body of Christ, that is, the church, asks the divine Father out of His pity to remember the poverty which His Son endured because of the transgression of His people, so that, if she has in this world the wormwood of tribulations, she may in future escape ‘galling’ and eternal punishment. She asserts that she ‘is mindful and remembers’ these things, because she does not recall them merely en passant (from them, as she well knows, came the beginning of her salvation). This kind of expression is unknown in secular writings, but very common in a  b 

Or perhaps ‘that poverty’ (cf. § 5 ‘the humble status that Christ took on’). Cf. Matt. 27, 34.

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3.

4.

5.

III, 19-21 (2.-7.)

6.

7.

ours. Thus to the first man was said: In what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death (Gen. 2, 17). And the opposite of that: In what day soever the sinner shall be converted, he shall live in life, and shall not die.a Of human emotions: Seeing the star the wise men rejoiced with exceeding great joy (Matt. 2, 10). And the Lord Himself : With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you (Luke 22, 15). The church therefore ‘is mindful and remembers’ with such concern the humble status that Christ took on for her salvation, as well as her own transgressions and her consequent present tribulations and eternal punishments—she is so disturbed and distressed by her reflections on these things that her soul languishes, that is, becomes dulled to love of the world, and faints. Hence she says: My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord (Ps. 83, 3), and also: My soul hath fainted after thy salvation (Ps. 118, 81). By meditation of this sort the church is given grounds for hope, for she is confident that she will triumph over the wicked one, remembering that she has been redeemed with a great price.b Not far from this way of taking the words, which I have assigned generally to the church of the elect, is their possible specific reference to the soul of every perfect man. For the soul of every faithful man is a member of the whole body of Christ, and to the best of her abilities begs God to remember His creation, which He knows better than we do, to remember that we are dust, man’s days are as grass.c ‘Remember,’ the soul says to the Lord, ‘that I am poor of wit for understanding your precepts, and ineffectual in strength to fulfil them’. Wherefore, I beg you, excuse me for having transgressedd them so often. Comparable in bitterness to wormwood and gall are the A mélange of Ezek. 18, 21 with 24; 33, 12 and 15. Cf. 1 Cor. 6, 20. c  Cf. Ps. 102, 14-15. d  B’s transgressa may be right. In that case, a generalised soul speaks till the end of the commentary on III, 19-21; but one would need to emend excusatum to excusatam. The masculines suggest that William passes on to speak of his own sense of guilt (though one might have expected the word order to throw emphasis on me). I have therefore (with hesitation) started a separate paragraph here. a 

b 

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troubles with which you afflict me in this life, and rightly, for I have transgressed your commandments. If I put up with them patiently, they should be of help to me in my hope to escape punishment for ever. So I will be mindful, with memory that is not vain, but effective and continual, both of the sweetness of your laws and of the bitterness of my penalties, so that I languish in my mind both in disgust for present evil and in desire for future good. And because I know that you will not judge the same case twice, the just requital in the form of worldly trouble sent to punish my manifold transgressions breeds in me good hope for the future. For if I suffer with Him, I shall, as the apostle bears witness, also reign with Him.a 3, 22-24. Heth. The mercy of the Lord, that we are not consumed, because his commiserations have not failed. I know at break of day, great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion; therefore will I wait for him. Heth is translated ‘fear’ or ‘life’. The significance of these translations is obvious, for in these verses either the whole church in general, or the soul of each perfect man in particular, comes to the end of her complaints and starts on a new topic. They do not, as previously, lament their miseries, but express surprise that their sins have so far gone unpunished, thanks to God’s forbearance. This is the figure rhetoricians call concession, when a defending counsel, finding no complication of excuse that would enable him to protect his client, turns his whole eloquence to asking the judge to show pity. It is true that the first verse fits the Jewish people well. For the commiserations of the Lord did not fail (though this was more than they deserved!). They were not entirely consumed: even after the ruin of the city, the citizens found a snug and peaceful retreat, in their homeland under Gedaliah,b or under Johanan in Egypt.c Even those who were taken off to Babylon so liked that place of Cf. Rom. 8, 17 and 2 Tim. 2, 12. Cf. 4 Kgs. 25, 24. c  Cf. Jer. 43, 5-7. a 

b 

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2.

III, 19-21 (7.) – III, 22-24 (4.)

3.

4.

exile that, when they were given the option to come back under Cyrus, very few thought it worth returning home.a the sense of the remaining verses conflicts with the notion of their being understood of the Jews, unless one thinks they should be referred to the prophet himself. For, so great was his faith, he was, like Moses, known to God by name,b and his prayer for the salvation especially of his own soul was heard at break of day, that is, at the right moment. While the others were busy packing their bags, he enjoyed an untroubled conscience, content with his portion (which was God).c Like other prophets, he was waiting, before the advent of the Lord, for the perfect redemption of the people; similarly the patriarch Jacob, after his blessing of Judah, into which he wove a clear prophecy concerning Christ, added: I will look for thy salvation, O Lord (Gen. 49, 18). But the words are more true and more emotional when spoken either by the church universal or by each individual soul:d so many were the persecutions by infidels, so many dangers from the heathen, so much plotting by false brethren. Amidst all this, thanks only to God’s mercy, not only was the church not consumed: she even made headway, thanks to ever more lively efforts, against the crises that clamoured at her; well could she say: because the commiserations of God have not failed. For although they very often seemed to be failing amid the straits caused by the savage persecutions, yet Christ’s help was always forthcoming when it was needed, strengthening those in the church who were standing to prevent them falling, and encouraging the lapsing or lapsed to rise to their feet again. What could man have done without Him? For He Himself said: Without me you can do nothing. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me (John 15, 4-5). Understanding this in a dutiful spirit, mother church spurned the mad beliefs of Pela-

Cf. 1 Ezra 1, 1-4; Ps. Rufinus, Ios. Ant. 11, 1 (p. 117r). Jeremiah is addressed by name in Jer. 1, 11; similarly Moses in Exod. 3, 4 (cf. 33, 12). c  Cf. (as well as the lemma) Ps. 118, 57. d  William proceeds to interpret of the church. He comes on to the soul in § 5. a 

b 

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giusa and his associates, and made good her escape from being consumed amidst such dangers; but she ascribes this to the mercy of God, not to her own cleverness or power. And she adds: Because his commiserations have not failed. Indeed they have never failed the church when she has asked in full faith, though they have often been delayed by a hidden judgement and have seemed not to respond to her prayers immediately. The soul too gives thanks to God, that by His mercy she has not been consumed—at least the soul that after extreme fear of torments passes to the joy of eternal life. (This is, as I said,b what is meant by the letter heth.) Hence: Blessed is the man that is always fearful (Prov. 28, 14). This makes it certain that no one will be blessed, that is, can never obtain eternal life, unless he has fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom.c The soul remembers how deceptive have been the plots with which the Enemy has assailed and ensnared her, how often she has given herself up to worldly allurements, with what forbearance God has looked on her errant faults. That is why she gives thanks to the merciful Lord, whose commiserations have not failed; for the suppliant has sooner failed in asking than the Giver in giving. All the same, as I mentioned before,d He does appear to be forgetting His pity when He delays fulfilling the prayers of those who beg Him, so that the soul has to cry out to Him: Remember, O Lord, thy commiserations, and thy mercies that are from the beginning of the world (Ps. 24, 6). But of course He is fully aware of what is best for us, and no sluggard in giving us what is necessary when He sees the time is ripe. Hence in our passage, when the church or the soul gives thanks, He at once replies: I know at break of day, great is thy faithfulness. We read this put differently elsewhere: The Lord knoweth who are his (2 Tim. 2, 19). And: ‘Before you call upon me, behold I am here.’e And in the Gospel: Great is thy faith: be it done to Cf. Bede, Hist. eccl. 1, 10, 1. i.e. ‘fear’ and ‘life’ (cf. § 1). c  Cf. Ps. 110, 10; Ecclus. 1, 16. d  Cf. § 4. e  Cf. Reg. Ben. prol. 18. a 

b 

272

5.

6.

III, 22-24 (4.-7.)

7.

thee as thou wilt (Matt. 15, 28). For the Lord knows who are His, because He writes the names of all the elect in the book of blessed predestination,a and before He is known by them precedes them with the grace of His predestination. That is the same as saying: I know at break of day, and ‘Before you call to me, look, I am here’. He also praises the faith of those who do not receive His grace in vain,b but co-operate with Him thanks to their labours.c It is to a soul like this that God says: I know at break of day, great is thy faithfulness. That is: So that you may know me by faith, I anticipate you in knowledge of my grace;d and I graciously approve that you do not by your sloth make the faith I gave you of no effect, and are not ungrateful for what you receive from my commiserations. She, enlivened by this condescension, immediately replies:e The Lord is my portion; therefore will I wait for him. And how few there are in the church who could say this without a qualm! Happy the conscience that waits with confidence for the heritage of God, scorning all the transitory things to be seen in this world! But this is the mark of those who come through to the letter heth, that is, who rise from the servile fear that is cast out by perfect charity to the holy fear of the Lord,f which remains for ever and ever and grants eternal life. It is well then that this is placed eighth among the Hebrew letters, signifying the time of blessed resur-

a  ‘This passage plays on the idea of the book of life found in e.g. Rev. 3, 5 and 22, 19. God, who is outside of time, knows the free choices made by human beings within time, and elects as his those who act in accordance with his will’ (Sønnesyn). b  Cf. 2 Cor. 6, 1. c  merito laborum is a favourite phrase in Cassian. There is perhaps an allusion to the words following close upon 2 Cor. 6, 1, where Paul enlarges on his sufferings in God’s service (note 4 ‘in laboribus’). d  i.e. (it seems) I know the grace I shall extend to you before you know it. Similarly above, ‘before He is known by them precedes them with the grace of His predestination’. This is the Augustinian doctrine of prevenient grace; see e.g. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (London, 1958), 366-7. Differently V, 21 ‘precedit … gratia’, ‘grace goes before’. e  Perhaps suggesting that William wrote ‘dixit anima mea’ in the lemma (as did Paschasius); so the Vulgate (‘the Lord is my portion, said my soul’). f  Cf. 1 John 4, 18.

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rection, which we look for in the eighth age of the world.a Here is a wonderful coincidence with the prophet’s utterance: in Psalm 118, which to match the number of Hebrew letters has twenty-two sections, each of eight verses, the first verse of the eighth section, marked heth, reads: O Lord, my portion, I have said, I would keep thy law (Ps. 118, 57). Only he can truly say this who, little attending to this world, which rolls on for seven days, but looking anxiously to the joys of the eighth, lingers here as a stranger, in body alone. 3, 25-28. Teth. The Lord is good to them that hope in him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good to wait with silence for the salvation of God. It is good for a man when he hath borne the heavy yoke of his youth. He shall sit by himself solitary, and hold his peace. These verses, taken together, breathe the sweet eloquence of moral teaching. The prophet, or rather the Holy Spirit through him, seems to be concerned with consoling the Jewish people; though afflicted by many woes, and even bound over to slavery, it should none the less hope in the Lord, for He stretches not forth His hand to their consumption, but to their correction.b For it is the part of a foolish man to kick against the goad,c but of a wise one to put aside impatient whisperings and wait for God’s healing mercy in thankful silence. The salvation of God which it is good to wait for can also be understood as our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He is clearly called the salvation of God at times elsewhere,d but especially in the psalms, as in: All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God (Ps. 97, 3). Also: The Lord hath made known his salvation (Ps. 97, 2). The Jews are therefore advised to await the coming of the Lord Saviour with patience, and to hope for perfect liberty by believing in Him; for the apostle says: We are not the children of the bondwoman, but of the free: by the freedom wherewith Christ has made us free (Gal. 4, 31). For ascending on high, He Himself by His virtue led our captivity Cf. Augustine, Civ. 22, 30. Cf. Job 30, 24. c  Cf. Acts 26, 14. d  e.g. Isa. 52, 10. a 

b 

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1.

2.

III, 22-24 (7.) – III, 25-28 (4.)

3.

4.

captive,a triumphing with His blood over the strength of the old serpent, and making peace as to the things that are in heaven and on earth.b But salutaryc to every soul that yearns for God is the precept not to stop putting her hope in God, whether she is gnawed at by consciousness of sin, or harassed by the bodily discomfort that is almost never absent. For the Lord’s custom, when He sees the sacrifice of an afflicted spirit,d is both to heal a conscience wounded by the memory of sin, and to calm the distress of the flesh in such a way as He knows to be in the interests of the soul. And He is good to the soul that hopes in Him, because He makes her good. Of this is said in Psalm 118, also under the letter teth: Thou hast done good with thy servant, O Lord (Ps. 118, 65). The Lord does good with a soul when He, who is of His essence good, makes her good by pouring in a gift He did not need to give.e Something like this is said in another passage too: Hope in the Lord, and do good (Ps. 36, 3). And through Isaiah: They that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall take wings as eagles, they shall fly and not fail (Isa. 40, 31). ‘Strength’ is when someone pricked by the grace of God comes to his senses after doing evil, and for fear of penalties restrains himself from vice. But a man ‘renews his strength’ if, solely for love of God and because the good is in itself sweet, he continues to do the good things which he had begun to do either to win repute in the world’s eyes or (as I have said)f out of fear of hell. In this way it comes about that, as the habit of virtue increases, he can (so far as is allowed in this life) contemplate the love of God with the sight of his mind undimmed, just as an eagle can gaze with unblinking eyes upon the brilliance of the sun. Therefore, taking on the wing of contemplation he flies and does not fail, because he never ceases to hope in God, or to seek Him until he finds Him perfectly. Cf. Eph. 4, 8 (also Ps. 67, 19). Cf. Col. 1, 20. c  Not just beneficial but conducing to salvation. d  Cf. Ps. 50, 19. e  i.e. Grace. The phrase recurs later in Thomas Aquinas. f  Cf. I, 8, 3. a 

b 

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Hence we read in our passage that the Lord is good to the soul that seeketh Him. Some seek God well, some badly. That is why, in the person of the man He took on, our Saviour in the psalm assigns confusion to some who seek Him, while He reproaches with sloth others who do not seek Him: Let them be confounded and ashamed, that seek after my soul to take it away (Ps. 39, 15), and elsewhere: Flight hath failed me: and there is no one that seeketh my soul (Ps. 141, 5). But other psalms invite to seek well: Seek ye God, and your soul shall live (Ps. 68, 33). Let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Seek ye the Lord, and be strengthened: seek his face evermore (Ps. 104, 3-4). The soul too, if she wishes to be saved, should seek without cease. Yet how difficult it is to find Him, so as in this life to taste His sweetness even slightly, is attested by the Bride in the Songs of Songs.a She says that neither in the repose of her bed nor by going round the highways and streets did she find the beloved she sought; finally, she consulted the watchmen, but received no definite reply. Now the soul seeks God in bed when, after putting to sleep the cares of earthly upsets, she fixes her whole attention on tasting the sweetness of His love within her. But if amid such peace of mind the irritation caused by the dust of the earth makes the eyes of the mind half-blind, how much more when she goes round the highways and streets, that is, when she walks the broad way of this life?b But even when she consults the watchmen, that is the teachers who fortify the church with the loud song of the scriptures, they do indeed hint at what she should do, but, weighed down (as I said)c by the flesh, she gropes around amid such brilliance of light. But when she has passed by them, that is, when she has cast off the body and gone beyond all their knowledge, she finds the beloved, holds him and does not let him go. The nearer she is when she sees him, the more deeply she loves him; and though faith and hope fail, charity grows daily.d Meanwhile, until one arrives at this joy, ‘it is good to wait with silence for the salvation of God’. It is good for the soul, despite Cf. 3, 1-4. Cf. Matt. 7, 13-14. c  Cf. III, 1-3, 16. d  Cf. 1 Cor. 13, 13. ‘Charity’ (Douai) is here clearly ‘love’. a 

b 

276

5.

6.

7.

III, 25-28 (5.-8.)

8.

being weighed down by the body, despite the great number of her crimes, not to cry out against God in impatience or despair, but to be patient and penitent, until our Saviour leads her out of this snare, and into perpetual salvation. Everyone who is perfectly penitent should wait for this recompense, and especially one who has shouldered from youth onwardsa the mild yoke of the Lord, and, submitting to obeying his elders, has established his life on good principles. That is why the text goes on: It is good for a man when he hath borne the heavy yoke of his youth. He shall sit by himself solitary, and hold his peace. Indeed it is particularly fitting for young men to rein in the aimlessness of wanton behaviour, and ever keep before their eyes the saying of the blessed Ambrose:b ‘There is laid upon us a great necessity to act well, for we have a judge whom what is hidden does not escape, whom what is honourable pleases and what is shameful offends.’ Happy the youth who acts in such a way that God does not pile up His vengeance while pretending not to notice, but instead in His mercy lightens or altogether annuls the punishment! Happy he who by his penitence makes accrue to his salvation all that God threatens for the punishment of the impenitent! Now these things are prefixed by the letter teth, meaning ‘exclusion’ or ‘good’, because while a man by God’s grace excludes vices from himself, he, led by that same grace, ascends to contemplate the supreme good. But if someone were to raise the question why Jeremiah called the yoke of serving the Lord heavy, though the Lord Himself called it light,c here is the reply. It is heavy for the unwilling, light for the willing; heavy for novices, light for the perfect. And in fact it is troublesome indeed for the young to abstain from pleasures, to be held back from gadding about: things which look the sweeter under the influence of the first heat of youth and one’s first entry into the cares of the world. But when a young man, supposing he is devoted to God, has gradually come to experience the bitEchoing another version of verse 27. Ambrose, Off. 1, 124. c  Cf. Matt. 11, 30. a 

b 

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terness of the worldly life, he cleanses his mind of earthly things, and whatever previously seemed troublesome becomes pleasant in the service of God. This sweetness will surely be more welcome and more readily available if, as I said,a from the very start of his training, a man, bound by his own will or by a vowb of obedience, becomes used to the good and turns the habit of virtue into part of his nature.c The blessed prophet instructs an honourable youth wonderfully well, when, teaching him what is most fitting for him, he says: He shall sit by himself solitary, and hold his peace. For at that age solitude commonly brings much good. If a youth entertains loose thoughts in his heart, but has no means of putting them into action, the pleasure of thinking on such things goes off the boil too; but if he does have a chance of acting on them, he can scarcely control himself from exploiting it, for all the hazards. There is a second fruit of solitude, at least for a perfect and learned man. It is then that he has the histories of all ages available to him; then that he recalls to his memory the actions of good men for him to admire and emulate, and the examples of bad men for him to abhor and avoid; then that he goes over the names of all his friends, and prays to God for each of them. Deserved then the praise for that excellent remark of a heathen, high up in the Roman state, that he was never less at leisure than when he was at leisure, never less alone than when he was alone. ‘A splendid saying,’ says Tully, ‘worthy of a great and wise man, showing that he was accustomed to ponder on business when he was at leisure, and to speak with himself when he was in solitude, so that he was never without occupation, and sometimes did not need to talk to another.’ d How befitting a young man is modesty of speech, which should come second only to chastity as his familiar companion, is shown by the Book of Ecclesiasticus: Young man, scarcely speak in thy own cause. And when thou art asked twice, let thy answer be short Cf. III, 25-28, 4. This seems to be the sense (cf. censura disciplinae at VD 2, 7, 8). In this passage as a whole, William is thinking of a youthful monk. c  Cf. Otto, 90-91 (also III, 4-6, 6). d  Cf. Cicero, Off. 3, 1 (on Scipio Africanus). a 

b 

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III, 25-28 (8.-11.)

11.

(Ecclus. 32, 10-11). In instructing him scarcely to reply in his own cause, even after a second asking, so much the more does he prevent him from being precipitate in deciding the disputes of others. Still, not only for younger persons but also for the religious, harsh critics of the lives of others, is modesty of speech altogether appropriate, for, as the apostle James says: If any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his tongue, but deceiving his own heart, this man’s religion is vain (Jas. 1, 26). On this topic, to take an example from lay writers too, the philosopher Xenocrates kept quiet when people were using abusive language in his presence. Asked by one of them why he alone kept stubbornly silent, he answered: ‘Because I have sometimes been sorry I spoke, but never sorry I kept quiet.’a From these instances it is clear that Jeremiah covered the principal endowments of a youthful mind when he recommended solitude and silence. If a youth by the grace of God practices these, he will be preparing for himself a pleasant and pious path towards the maturity of old age. Now as to what comes next,b because he will raise himself above himself, who could fail to see how carefully defines the citadel of divine contemplation? For one who devotes himself to holy solitudec and hardworking silence raises himself above himself, because, while externally the flesh is undistracted by the din of worldly cares, internally the soul is raised up towards God beyond the powers of her corrupt nature. Then from intimate acquaintanced she laments the sins she remembers committing, harrying her illicit actions with her tears. Presently too, as the habit of good increases, she completes in the love of contemplating God what she had begun out of fear of penalties: what she previously used to weep for because she dreaded punishment, she now lamentse because she is on her way to glory. Cf. Valerius Maximus 7, 2 ext. 6. The last part of v. 28 (marked as 28b in the Latin text). c  singularitati. See II, 3, 3 n. d  Similarly Terence, Andr. 136 joins flens familiariter: ‘she fell upon him, weeping like an intimate of his’. e  Previously the soul wept because she was frightened of punishment; now she weeps because she is is conscious of not being in a fit state to reach glory. a 

b 

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3, 29-30. There follows, prefixed by the letter jod:a He shall put his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope. He shall give his cheek to him that striketh him, he shall be filled with reproaches. It is to be noted that in these words the Holy Spirit is instructing not only youths but also older men.b Blessed is he who carries the yoke of the Lord patiently, so as to shun and shake off the burden of the Devil. Blessed is he who sits solitary by himself and holds his peace. (He resembles Him who said: I am become as a sparrow all alone on the housetop (Ps. 101, 8); for though He was ‘alone by himself ’c in the beauty of His ways ‘above the sons of men’,d yet in the Passion He seemed altogether contemptible: as the prophet says: Lo we have seen him, having no beauty nor comeliness (Isa. 53, 2). There too He held His peace, and was dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and did not open His mouth.)e Yet a man excels in all the virtuesf if he does not through pride scatter to the winds the good things of God that were freely bestowed on him, but gathers them together by carefully guardingg his humility. To do this, he needs to put ‘his mouth in the dust’, that is, remember that he was made of mud and must be brought back to dust, saying with the prophet: Our soul is humbled down to the dust: our belly has been stuck down to the earth (Ps. 43, 25). For the best way of guarding humility is that a man, however strong in holiness, should always ponder in his mind with what dusty filth William has wrongly included the previous verse (‘sedebit singulariter solitarius et tacebit quia leuabit se supra se’) under teth, leaving jod with only two verses. b  This follows on from the exposition of verse 28 as applying to the training of a young man (III, 25-28, 9 [III, 1181]: ‘the prophet instructs an honourable youth’). The sentence that follows reprises verses 27 and 28 (yoke, sitting solitary). The passage linking the Lam. text to Christ’s Passion is in effect parenthetic (as marked), for the particle quidem is picked up by ueruntamen (‘yet’). The discussion of humility in §§ 2-3 applies by implication to the adult. In § 4 William discusses an alternative (quasi-‘historical’) connection, with the Jews. c  Varying ‘singulariter solitarius’, ‘by himself solitary’ in v. 28. d  Cf. Ps. 44, 3. e  Cf. Isa. 53, 7. f  i.e. he goes beyond being beatus in the senses specified before the parenthesis. g  A difficult use of cautela; it seems to mean the same as custodia (twice) in § 2. Cf. II, 20, 4 (‘pro legum cautela suarum’, ‘to protect their own laws’). a 

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of misdeeds he has polluted his soul, with how sticky a birdlime of sins he has stuck down his belly (by which I understand the mind, according to the rules of tropes)a to the cares of the earth. On the other hand, the wicked have set their mouth against heaven: and their tongue hath passed through the earth (Ps. 72, 9). Ungrateful for God’s gifts, they ascribe to their own merits the virtuous deeds they perform, as the Pelagians once did, and perhaps some do now. But they trail their tongue on the earthb because they would surely never dare even to think such perverse thoughts if they did not have earthly understandings. The elect, on the other hand, put their mouth in the dust, because they believe in their hearts and confess with their mouths that they are subject to the dust of sin and must one day be consumed to dust. And this if so be there may be hope, that is, if by some chance, with God’s help, they may by this guarding of their humility be able to gain possession of the joys to which they aspire with unwearying prayers. But because there are some who, though humble in their own eyes, are highly offended when another injures them, we are also told: He shall give his cheek to him that striketh him, he shall be filled with reproaches. Being an inspired prophet, Jeremiah foreshadows the Gospel precept: If one strike thee on the cheek, turn to him also the other (Matt. 5, 39). For it is fitting that one who knows he is answerable to God for his sins should not be vexed at the reproach of a man: one who has experienced the forbearance of God towards him will not be troubled at injury done him by man. He shall be filled with reproaches. Pay attention to the meaning of these words. The Christian of perfect weight of mind should face, not just patiently but gladly too, the darts of abuse launched by the pertinacity of any angry person. To back up this saying let there be called an irrefutable witness, David. When already raised aloft in the triumphal insignia of kingship, he replied to a foolish woman, who was objecting that he had dimmed the splendour of power by dancing before the ark of the Lord: I will play, and i.e. figures, in this case allegory. Cf. III, 13-15, 4 (trailing the heart). But the text may not be sound; one expects ‘their tongue has passed through the earth’, as in the psalm. a 

b 

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make myself meaner in my own eyes than I have done (2 Kgs 6, 22). The same David, when, through the agency of his parricide son, he had by a planned flight raised the siege of Jerusalem,a said to a tried and tested soldier, who wanted to punish the insults of an abusive enemy: Let him alone and let him curse: for the Lord hath bid him curse (2 Kgs 16, 10). In this manner he took the abuse ‘on the mouth’,b not just contemptuously but eagerly. There are those who say that these words of the prophet were spoken for the instruction of the Jews, because they would be blessed if they bore God’s scourges with forbearance, so as by their patience to win for themselves the hope of gaining God’s favour. But the synagogue listened to such warnings only at times,c for all their hope was set on earthly things (hence: If you be willing, and will hearken to me, you shall eat the good things of the land (Isa. 1, 19)):d unless maybe there were a very few able to look through a tiny chinke into the understanding of spiritual truth. The church more regularly. She was taught by the example of her head, Jesus Christ, not to fear abuse, but to seek the hope of good things in the future, as the apostle says: We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come (Hebr. 13, 14). And this is by the letter jod, meaning ‘beginning’ or ‘desolation’, because, while holy church recalls from what initial dignity she has been brought down to the desolation of her present misery, she does show great spirit in passing through transient adversities in the confidence that she will obtain glory for ever.

a  The reference is to Absalom and the events described later in 2 Kgs. (15-16), but William does not follow the biblical account at all strictly. See also I, 14, 7. b  i.e. ‘in the face’; os is ambiguous, but William alludes to the lemma. c  This seems to be the meaning (lit. ‘rather sparingly’); contrast usitatius (‘more regularly’) below. d  This citation should be taken with the next verse in Isaiah (‘But if you will not …’), and the general pessimistic context. e  Cf. I, 20, 4 (I, 3044).

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1.

2.

3, 31-33. Caph. For the Lord will not drive away for ever. For if he hath cast off, he will also have mercy, according to the multitude of his mercies. joins what follows to what preceded. For he is blessed who bears the yoke of the Lord patiently, and the rest of what came before,a just because the Lord does not scourge temporally in order to drive away for ever. If He seems from the human viewpoint to be casting off, He is actually delaying, in particular so as to test the patience of the one being scourged, and so that His mercy may one day shine out more clearly. For if the course of human life always slipped smoothly by, it might be thought to be driven around in this manner by nature or chance, rather than being directed providentially under God’s control. But when the flow of felicity is interrupted as a result of sins, God, by bringing this about, is weakening the prosperity that leads to the commission of crimes, but also awakening the torpid human soul by the blast of some setback, so that she comes to know Him.b For how is the most merciful Creator to lose opportunities to correct His creation? Hence what follows: For he hath not humbled from his heart, nor cast off the children of men. The order is: ‘For he did not humble and cast off from his heart the children of men.’ So elsewhere: Can a virgin forget her stomacher, or a woman the son of her womb? And if she should forget, yet will not I forget thee, saith the Lord (Jer. 2, 32 + Isa. 49, 15). Alternatively, ‘humbled from his heart’c may be understood as if He was speaking intransigently and without any return to forgiveness, with the fixed intention of punishing. But the Lord does not humble like this, He who desires not the death of a sinner,d and takes no pleasure in His creation being tormented. Referring especially to v. 30. Possibly ‘herself ’? For self-knowledge, see esp. III, 40-42, 5. It ‘was regarded as a requisite for proper moral development, as seen for instance in the title of Abelard’s book on ethics, Scito te ipsum, and the emphasis in Hugh of St Victor’s introductory chapters to his Didascalicon’ (Sønnesyn). c  i.e. taking the lemma in the original order. d  Cf. Ezek. 33, 11. a 

b 

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So it is righta that these words are marked with the letter caph, which means ‘hand’ or ‘curved’. Now there is a wrong curving, of which evil spirits speak through the prophet to a soul intent on earthly things: Bow down, that we may go over (Isa. 51, 23). That He was subject to this gave grief to Him who said: They prepared a snare for my feet; and they bowed down my soul (Ps. 56, 7). These people God chastises in such a manner as to drive them away and cast them off for ever, because sometimes He reserves such persons for eternal punishment after their temporal distresses. On the other hand, God Himself says proudly to Elias that His faithful are not subject to this curving, when He says: I have left me seven thousand men, that have not bowed their knees to Baal (Rom. 11, 4). But as for those who obey the blessed apostle Peter, when he says: Be ye humbled under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in the time of visitation (1 Pet. 5, 6), however high the virtues with which they increase, they bow themselves down in comparison to God’s holiness, as is said through the blessed Job: Under whom they are bowed that bear up the world (Job 9, 13). These people, when they are encompassed by pains, and by God’s hand bowed down in the present, do not burst out in impatient complaints, but regard all they suffer as punishment for their sins. Just because prosperity on earth is not favouring them, they do not grow cold in their enthusiasm to serve God. Thus under the same letter we have in Psalm 118: They had almost made an end of me upon earth: but I have not forsaken thy commandments (v. 87). 3, 34-36. Lamed. To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the land, to turn aside the judgment of a man in the sight of the most High, to destroy a man wrongfully in his judgment, the Lord hath not approved. Anaphora is what grammarians call the figure where a number of verses start in the same way, just as homoeoteleuton is when a number finish in the same way.b We can see both at work in these Apparently because men who curve in the right manner (as William goes on to define it) are approved of by God, who therefore would not humiliate them. b  Cf. e.g. Bede, De schematibus 2, 1. a 

284

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verses. For Paschasiusa pronounced that they should be read like this: ‘The Lord, to crush under his feet all the prisoners of the land, hath not approved. To turn aside the judgement of a man, he hath not approved. To destroy a man wrongfully in his judgement, he hath not approved.’ These figures writers on divine matters often use just to show they know how to talk like this; but very often they scorn them, to show they do not wish to talk like this, for fear the sense is impaired and people look not for meaning in their words but only pretty arrangement. Anyway, in these verses the prophet drives home and adds weight to what he has said before, showing that God does not scourge in this world in order to drive away for eternity. For He does not ‘approve’, because it is quite alien to His gentleness altogether to crush those whom earthly cares make prisoner, if He puts them under His feet, that is, makes them strive emulously to follow in the tracks of His goodness; rather, he wishes to correct them. He does not crush those hitherto bound in the crimes of the earth, in order to drive them away, but chastises them with merciful scourges, in order to make them return. When these same people are under His feet, that is, when they are running the way of His commandments with subservient mind but enlarged heart,b He does not torture them with a tyrant’s rage, but chastises them as a father might. Nor does He ‘turn aside the judgement of a man’, for, when a man judges someone, he does not deviate from the right path, at least if he remains ‘before the face of the most High’.c As for God, He Himself never weighs judgement except in a true balance, though the foolish think He is ‘destroying’ it when they see a man doing good and (to their surprise) having to endure evil. In accordance with this common notion, an eminent poet says: ‘Ripheus falls too, the single most just person among the Trojans, and the most observant of the right: the gods thought otherwise.’d Christ too did not approve to ‘destroy a man wrong3 (p. 193, 1512-1515). Cf. Reg. Ben. prol. 49. c  This is the Douai translation of the Vulgate phrase (the lemma above leaves out uultus, ‘face’). d  Vergil, Aen. 2, 426-428. a 

b 

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fully in his judgment’. For He who was appointed by God the Father to be judge of the living and of the dead, judges all things justly, when He allows men to suffer agonies both here and in the future either to punish their evil deeds or to increase their good. (These wordsa may also be turnedb against the Marcionite heretics and their followers, who blasphemed against the God of the Old Testament, calling Him cruel and bloodthirsty, capable of ordering the slaughter of men for trivial reasons. Indeed sinners conceive cheering hopes from the words, when they hear that God their creator is more prone to mercy than to judgement.)c Now these ideas are conveyed by the letter lamed, which is translated ‘discipline’ or ‘of the heart’ or ‘I keep’. If a churchman joins the three together, saying, not falsely but in truth, ‘I keep discipline of heart’, he is without doubt blessed; worn away by scourgings, he not only does not grumble: he is not even moved at heart. However severe the adversity he suffers under, he knows it is assigned him not unjustly, but so that (as I said before)d he can either purify his past errors or seek eternal remedies. 3, 37-39. Mem. Who is he that hath commanded a thing to be done, when the Lord commandeth it not? Evil and good shall not proceed out of the mouth of the Highest.e Why hath a living man murmured, manf for his sins?g The utterance of the prophet proceeds in an orderly way. For after ruling out the complaint of those who accuse God of undue severity, he goes on logically to confute the folly of those who deny the very existence of divine providence. The speaker is therei.e. the lemma’s remarks on the justice of God. As it were ‘recycled’. c  The parenthesis makes two points about the lemma: it can be used against heretics who think the God of the Old Testament cruel, and sinners may take comfort from its implication that God does not take the demands of justice over-far. d  Cf. I, 12, 13. e  Not marked as a question in B either here or in § 2. Note Paschasius 3, 1609-10, carefully. f  The Douai translation adds ‘suffering’. g  The Latin (like the Greek) distinguishes ‘man’ as a human being from ‘man’ as a male; see William’s discussion in § 3 (III, 1424-1426). a 

b 

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III, 34-36 (3.) – III, 37-39 (3.)

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fore the church, patiently upholding against the unbelieving the punishment ordained by God, at a time when it was said to her daily: Where is thy God? (Ps. 41, 4). Imagine how the Gentiles raged against her when, faced by numberless persecutors anxious to curry favour with bloodstained princes, she had no one to help except her hidden Comforter! If any of the heathen were gentler, because they had some regard for human feelings, they wondered that innocents, albeit of a different persuasion, were being indiscriminately subjected to appalling tortures, though meanwhile the God in whom they trusted seemed not to know or care. It thus came about that the tenet of the Epicureans took hold in their minds, which tries to assert that everything is rolled along by fate, and that no one is at the tiller of the world. The church is right to protest against such people, saying: Who is he that hath commanded a thing to be done, when the Lord commandeth it not? As though she were saying: ‘Who is so precipitate in thought and speech as to say that I am distressed by so many persecutions, while my Christ does not care or does not know? Who is there who thinks that everything mortal is tossed about without a steersman, so that in return for affliction here I have no good things to look forward to—and my persecutors no evil?’ For that is what the church seems to mean when she added: Evil and good shall not proceed out of the mouth of the Highest. But she was herself very well aware that, for all the carping that anyone might indulge in against her, her hope was in a safe place, for she knew that her Redeemer does not err in His judgement. He was merely exercising her by tribulations, that He might present to himself a church not having spot or wrinkle.a Thisb is what should be said not only by every church but by each person chosen to fall to God’s lot, when he suffers under the scourge. For, in the apostle’s words, All that will live godly in Christ suffer persecution (2 Tim. 3, 12). Hence what comes next: Why hath a living man murmured, man for his sins? Which is to say: Why has a man murmured while he lives and is being scourged by God for his a  b 

Cf. Eph. 5, 27. The reference is uncertain.

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sins, aware as he is of having done much for which he ought to be punished? He is called both a man [homo] because he is suffering temporally as humans do, and a man [uir] because he is looking forward to eternal life in a virile manner. Now this meaning is conveyed by the letter mem, which is translated ‘from the inmost’ or ‘from the very [ipsis]’ or ‘from the last of fire’.a For in fact it is ‘from the inmost ’, the very ‘bowels’ of spiritual discipline, beyond which it is hard for a man to ascend, that is drawn the knowledge that God arranges the affairs of man, even if they look to be tossed about on the ocean of Fortune. For what else could a foolish man, dedicated only to the bodily senses, think when he sees the just worn down by wrong, while the ungodly flourish in success, with everything going their way? For example, we have in the psalms a saying of foolish men: How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most High? Behold these are sinners; and abounding in the world they have obtained riches (Ps. 72, 11-12). But straight afterwards in the same psalm there is another saying, of wise men, men lit up by the fire of the Holy Spirit: When they were lifted up thou hast cast them down (Ps. 72, 18). For what proceeds from ‘the last of fire’, that is from the arcane doctrines of the Holy Spirit, is the ability to understand the last things of the ungodly, to know that they are cast down in their inmost parts when they are lifted up outside: just as contrariwise the just are lifted up in their inmost parts when they are cast down outside as a result of scourgings inflicted by divine providence. The spiritual fire therefore sets alight the heart of one who meditates, and sends into him the wish to rise up to understanding these things; as the same psalm says: For my heart hath been inflamed, and my reins have been changed (Ps. 72, 21). 3, 40-42. Nun. Let us search our ways, and seek, and return to the Lord. Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to the heavens. We have done wickedly, and provokedb to wrath; therefore thou art inexorable. a  b 

But cf. Paschasius 3, 1571 (also 1586), where the order is ‘ignis ex ultimis’. The Douai translation adds ‘thee’.

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After his discussion of a difficult question, comes back to moral teaching.a It is as though he were saying: What is the point of us seeking these things, which it is laborious to understand until we enter into the sanctuary of God?b Let us rather return to ourselves, and search our ways, and seek, and return to the Lord. There are three precepts here: that we make careful enquiry to see if in our youth we exposed ourselves to treacherous frolics; if we have lost our chastity; if now, as we decline into old age,c we feel active in us some remains of enticements, some traces of pleasures. In this manner, examining our past and present life with great attention, and as it were sitting in severe judgement on our actions, let us return to the Lord, so that He, who has hitherto patiently borne with our going astray, may be glad to receive us back now we have turned. And He will assuredly do that if we ‘lift up our hearts with our hands to the heavens’. These words a most judicious utterance of the blessed Gregory explains, if I am not mistaken, like this: ‘To lift up hearts with hands is to raise our concentrated prayerd together with enthusiasm for good works.’e Let us, by following the teaching of this most distinguished man, act well; then we shall be able to pray without worry. A man who has grown deaf to God’s precepts, or, if he has heard them, has hardened himself against putting them into practice, deludes himself that He will be munificent. Wherefore let us come before His face with confession,f pouring out before Him all our misery, that He may deign to grant us His mercy. But if what we want is not immediately forthcoming, let us impute this to our sins, not to His harshness. For ‘we have done wickedly, and provoked to wrath’: therefore He is inexorable—or a 

(§ 4).

A possible ‘historical’ explanation is inserted into the moralising later on

Cf. Ps. 72, 17. We recall that William has himself turned forty. The whole passage sounds very personal. d  William puts the idea more simply in §  4 (‘pure prayers’). For Gregory’s phrase, cf. Tertullian, Orat. 12; we might speak of ‘focused prayer’. But normally intentio orationis would mean ‘the intention behind a prayer’. e  Cf. Gregory the Great, Epist. app. (p. 1102, 19-21). f  Cf. Ps. 94, 2. b  c 

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rather seems so. With these words the blessed prophet signifies the loss caused by violation of charity. There are two precepts for charity, love of God and love of one’s neighbour.a We have broken both, when we ‘have done wickedly’ against God and our neighbour, when we have exasperated our gentle God by countless faults. Nor should it arouse surprise that puts harm to a neighbourb before the anger of God, for according to the blessed evangelist John He that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not? (1 John 4, 20). Why then are we surprised if God listens to our prayer only tardily, considering that we continually turn our ears away from charity, which is the highest quality of a good heart? Beyond doubt, according to Solomon, he that closeth his ears so as not to hear the law, his prayer shall be an abomination (Prov. 28, 9). True, these words may not inappropriately be thought to be uttered in the person of the Jewish captives,c enabling Jeremiah to address them with instances close to home, so that they might know God to be inexorable in their woes, because they had scorned His ordinances in prosperity. Let them therefore search, and seek what in particular in their ways had offended Him, so as thereby to find a means to return, and lift up their hearts with their hands: that is, concentrate on good works and send up pure prayers to heaven. Yet, while the Jews as usual go on scorning the Lord’s precepts, let us snatch a word from the mouth of the prophet, and by careful examination search the paths of our own actions, saying to God with the psalmist: Prove me, O God, and know my heart: examine me, and know my paths. And see if there be in me the way of iniquity: and lead me in the eternal way (Ps. 138, 23-24). A man, by God’s grace, arranges the road of his actions to conduce to his salvation only when he knows himself through and through.d Indeed this is an old and well-worn saying: ‘Know thyself.’ After the Spartan Philon, third of the seven sages, had pronounced it to the profit of Cf. Luke 10, 27. Apparently representing ‘have done wickedly’. c  Rather than in that of the soul; see n. on § 1. d  See III, 31-33, 1 n. a 

b 

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all mankind, Greece, in admiration, had it inscribed honorifically on the doors of the temple of the Pythian Apollo.a Accordingly, that saying is the beginning of the pasture of salvation. And in fact the letter nun means ‘beginning’ b or ‘of pasture’, indicating that we should put aside all laziness and search out with all zeal to what height of dignity we were created by God’s condescension; to what a depth of misery we have come thanks to our faults; at what price we were redeemed; by what misdeeds we have clouded over the brightness of our redemption. As a beginning, then, let us rouse the strength of our natural wit to take note of these things. But if we cannot, if in Vergil’s words ‘the cold blood comes to a halt around our hearts’,c let us dwell in the pastures of the holy scriptures. They assuredly will give us rich and abundant food, so that we may be in a position to fill others too with the sweetness of desire for higher things, showing both the beginning of heavenly life that men lost,d and the damage that followed. Hence, as the cleanest animal in the spiritual meadowe says: The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing. In a place of pasture, there He hath set me (Ps. 22, 1-2). For in truth he who under God’s guidance walks with pleasure through the pastures of the scriptures, as in a plentiful field which the Lord hath blessed,f will feel in need of nothing that might be lacking to his salvation. 3, 43-45. Samech. Thou hast covered in wrath, and hast struck us; thou hast killed and hast not spared. Thou hast set a cloud before thee, that prayer may

a  William draws especially on Pliny the Elder, Nat. 7, 119. The correct name of the sage is Chilon. I do not know a Latin parallel for his being placed third out of the seven. b  In fact, jod meant this (see III, 29-30, 4). William seems to have misunderstood an obscure passage in Paschasius. c  Georg. 2, 484. d  i.e. at the Fall. Cf. the use of principium at IV, 1254. e  The speaker of the psalm, called an ‘animal’ because he represents himself as being pastured in a meadow, ‘clean’ because he expresses such irreproachable sentiments. The commentators regard the psalm as spoken by the church (Augustine) or a reborn Christian (Cassiodorus). f  Cf. Gen. 27, 27.

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not pass through. Thou hast made me an uprooting and casting out in the midst of the peoples. The prophet directly addresses God, lamenting the tragedy of a people taken captive, in case it may find the Creator merciful. These words can be fitted to the Jews both historically and allegorically,a for it is equally legitimate to regard them as describing either their loss of the good life or an increase in their woe. First, when he says to God Thou hast covered, he does not specify whether He covered Himself or the Jews. If the reference is to God, the explanation is as follows: Because of their earlier sins, He covered for them their understanding and love of Him, so that, having withdrawn from the good things they knew, they might eventually, in the blindness they had brought upon themselves, be unaware of the good things they ought to do. Like this is the remark of the apostle about philosophers, who, having gained their understanding of the Creator by looking at His creations, have not glorified him as God, or given thanks, but became vain in their thoughts (Rom. 1, 21), as a result of which God delivered them up to a reprobate sense (Rom. 1, 28). Hence the psalmist too: Add thou iniquity upon their iniquity: and let them not come into thy justice (Ps. 68, 28). ‘In wrath’ is added because, although wrath is alien to God’s nature, He nevertheless seems (if I may say so) in a way to be wrathful when, under pressure from the sins of men, He pours upon them a whole mass of punishment. And what punishment could be heavier than that the eyes of the mind become so blind that they cannot properly see? But if ‘thou hast covered’ relates to the Jews, we shall say that God so covered and weighed them down by a fearful calamity that they could not arise again. Of this is said in the psalm: Thou hast humbled us in the place of affliction, and the shadow of death hath covered us (Ps. 43, 20). And ‘in the wrath’ of those who harried them, the Babylonians, or the Romans, who, in their own times victors over all nations, were unhappy to see their steady run Not in William’s normal usage of an allegory connecting the text with the church, but figurative (alongside literal) application of it to the Jews. There is allegory with reference to Christ in § 6. a 

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of success interrupted by wars with Judaea. That wrath was provoked by the unworthinessa of their enemies, whom they saw as freebooters rather than exponents of the science of warfare. Thou hast struck us either with the wound of disbelief or the affliction of scattering, as the psalmist prays: Scatter them by thy power; and bring them down, O Lord, my protector (Ps. 58, 12). Thou hast killed: either, by taking from us spiritual understanding of the law, you let usb be ‘mortified’ by our sins (an error afflicting the Jews nowadays, as everybody knows)—or alternatively, in literal truth, you let us be tormented by countless types of commotion, when we were harried by the Babylonians, the Macedonians, and last of all the Romans. Read Josephus,c and you will learn how many thousands wasted away from hunger in the siege, how many were taken away into captivity, how many sold into slavery in diverse lands, how many subjected to combat as gladiators. And look how well David’s description in the psalm fits the killing and scattering recorded by Jeremiah: They shall go into the lower parts of the earth: they shall be delivered into the hands of the sword, they shall be the portions of foxes (Ps. 62, 10-11). For just as the Hebrews were driven by the Assyrians and Chaldeans into higher districts, so they were scattered by the Romans into lower ones,d and fated (as I said) to die by the sword there at the whim of their conquerors, who I think are called foxes because of their skill in the science of war. From all of this it is clear that God did not spare those who put His Son to a cruel death. For He did not spare them when He expelled them from His grace, from their homeland, from sound understanding. Rightly then is the removal of help lamented: they had deserted it in their hearts, and derided it with their mouths, saying: His blood be upon us and upon our children (Matt. 27, 25). See I, 14, 9 n. i.e. the Jews of the past. c  Cf. Ps. Rufinus, Ios. Bell. Iud. 6, 11 (pp. 304v-305r) (hunger; cf. II, 20, 3); 7, 15 (f. 316r) (captives); 7, 16 (f. 316v) (slavery, gladiators; cf. also III, 64-66, 5). d  The Assyrians and the Chaldeans carried the Jews off ‘upcountry’, to the east. I take it William thought of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem as being followed by a diaspora in the opposite direction. See also V, 17-18, 1. a 

b 

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To this is added a culminating distress: the cloud of their sins covered the ears of God, so that their prayer could not be heard. True, we read of ‘a bright cloud’ that overshadowed the Lord and the disciples, and served Him by carrying Him up to heaven.a (Isaiah means the apostles by ‘clouds’, when he says: Who are these, that fly as clouds? (Isa. 60, 8), because they filled the whole world with a cloud of heavenly doctrines.) But this is a thick cloud, wrapped in the filth of vice, that keeps the prayer of sinners out, and prevents it getting through to the Creator, who inhabiteth light inaccessible.b In the Gospel He says: I am the light of the world (John 8, 12). And John says: God is light, and in him there is no darkness (1 John 1, 5). But if you prefer to take this figuratively, the Son of God covered His divinity in the cloud of His flesh, to prevent Him being recognised by the Jews, who had been blinded for their lack of faith. Because they struck Him, and killed Him— for the Father did not spare His own Son, but handed Him over for the sake of us all—God did not spare them either; they were struck by the affliction of blindness,c and in accordance with the prophecy of Ezekiel were scattered to every wind when the sword was drawn out after them.d But remember what I have often said,e that, in a locution characteristic of the Bible, God is said to do the sort of things that He allows to happen because men so deserve. That is why we read next: Thou hast made me an uprooting and casting out in the midst of the peoples. Blinded because of their sins, the Jews uprooted themselves from their native soil and the land of the living, of which is said: I will please the Lord in the land of the living (Ps. 114, 9), and I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living (Ps. 26, 13). They are themselves cast out, the most despised of all men of every sect and condition. In the midst of the peoples: among whom they have been scattered, on the

Cf. Matt. 17, 5 (where Christ is not carried to heaven). Cf. 1 Tim. 6, 16. c  Cf. Tobias 2, 13 (where Douai gives ‘evil’; perhaps ‘plague’). This is one of a cluster of similar expressions (plaga dispersionis, caecitatis, iniquitatis) hereabouts. d  Ezek. 5, 2; 17, 21. e  Cf. II, 1, 1 with n. a 

b 

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face of the whole earth.a These words may be referred to Christ, in such a way that we say that He was (in the view of those who used to say: When shall he die and his name perish? (Ps. 40, 6) and Come, let us put wood on his bread, and cut him off from the land of the living (Jer. 11, 19)) ‘uprooted’ from the land when they had seen His body thrust into the tomb and surrounded by a guard of soldiers. Further, that He was ‘cast out’ when in the disgrace of the Passion He hid His divinity, is clearly witnessed to by Isaiah: Behold, we have seen him, with no beauty or comeliness; his sightliness is not in him; the most abject of men, and acquainted with infirmity (Isa. 53, 2-3). And this ‘in the midst’, that is the clear view, ‘of the peoples’, because after this it was apparent to all nations throughout the world how far He cast Himself down for our salvation. But every soul, believing but not yet free of sin, complains that she is covered in the blindness of ignorance, and therefore has been struck by the affliction of iniquity, and, because she still persists in sins, even killed quite dead: God not sparing her, for by a just but severe judgement He does not spare a soul when He allows her to toss without restraint on the sea of her own vice. But when He calls her to heel with His rigorous scourge, He is mercifully sparing her, giving her pain so as not to punish her for eternity. Meantime, however, while she thinks she has to persist in evil, her prayer is not audible, because, with the cloud of sin set before her, she strikes the air with her tongue, but her cry does not reach the ear of the God of mercy. That is why she was uprooted from heaven, to possess which she had been made, and cast out into the midst of the peoples, that is, the wicked spirits which, while she remains here in the body, tie her up in faults as they please, and on her departure press upon her with torments at their pleasure. These things are expressed by the letter samech, translated ‘hear!’ or ‘prop’ or ‘help’. It excites to hear it not the ear of the body but the ear of the heart. The Lord too speaks of it in the Gospel: He that hath ears to hear, let him hear (e.g. Matt. 11, 15). The same a 

Cf. Dan. 8, 5.

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idea comes in Revelations, which very often says: He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches (e.g. Rev. 2, 7). Let the soul therefore hear how severely God dealt with His own special people, and feel afraid of falling into the same judgement, if she fails to heed the example. Let her hear what price Christ paid for our sins, and heedfully beware lest by her vice a prize so beyond compare may, so far as she is concerned, be quite lost. For surely, unless He is feigning who says: Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world (Matt. 28, 20), she will have both a help in coming back to her right mind from evil, and a prop to support her in persevering in the good. 3, 46-48. Phe. All the enemies have opened their mouth against me. Prophecy is become to us a fear and a snare, and destruction.a My eye hath sent down divisions of waters, for the destruction of my people. The prophet laments a double calamity for the nation, affecting bodies and souls, when he says that all the enemies have opened their mouth against them, meaning enemies seen and unseen. For it is readily to be believed that the Chaldeans shook their sides with much gaping of mouths and great guffaws, when they saw the city and temple go up in flames, gnashing their teeth at those they were putting to the sword and subjecting to injuries. The expression is by analogy with beasts, which open their brutish jaws wide and bareb their grinding teeth when they are hoping for prey or hunting it down. Of this is said in the psalm: They have opened their mouth against me, as a lion ravening and roaring (Ps. 21, 14). The same is to be supposed of invisible enemies too; there is an intimation of their rapacity when they saw the souls of unfortunate persons, who had been killed for offences against God’s law, being whirled through the empty air and finally plunged into hell. We At one point William’s discussion below shows (‘Equally, …’) that he took contritio (‘destruction’) to be a second subject of facta est, ‘is become’ (alongside uaticinatio, ‘prophecy’), not a predicate. Yet just afterwards (‘their very destruction’) he takes it as parallel to laqueus (‘a snare’). b  In one phrase William seems to merge two ideas, the baring of the teeth (cf. Judg. 15, 19) and the ‘twisting’ of the mouth that contains them (os distorquere). a 

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are also given the reason for such evils, that they had not believed what the prophets foretold: Prophecy is become to us a fear and a snare, and destruction. For when the prophets predicted the coming of those evils, the sluggish common people were scared for the moment, but, when punishment was put off for a while, they became unconcerned; sloth followed, and concomitant on it neglect of God’s law. Soon, when they said Peace and security, sudden disaster came upon them,a and those who had refused to believe the prophecy were taken as in a snare. Equally, their very destruction became to them a fear and a snare; as I said, they had been taken suddenly, and in their awareness of their sins they grew afraid of greater dangers in the future. So when they heard the prophecies, they were fearful lest they might be fulfilled; and when they were fulfilled, destruction and a snare overwhelmed them, for they were not expecting it. But what follows suits only Jeremiah: My eye hath sent down divisions of waters, for the destruction of my people. Here ‘divisions of waters’ seems to show what I said before, a double grief, for the killing of bodies and the downfall of souls. Alternatively, you can take the phrase straightforwardly: his tears poured out so fast that, like a torrent rushing downhill, they wet his face and soaked his clothes. Here we are shown the compunction and great love in the prophet’s soul; unconcerned for himself, but anxious for his fellow-citizens, he paid their downfall the recompense of many tears. It is customary for holy men to harry the sins of others by weeping themselves, and to lament internal faults more than external woes. That is why Samuel grieved for Saul, whom he had reproved because of his disobedience.b That is why David lamented the death of the same Saul, his deadliest enemy, and of two of his own sons, guilty one of incest the other of murder, while taking lightly the decease of a boy in whom he knew of no serious sin.c The Lord, too, wept not for the death of a friend [Lazarus], whom Cf. 1 Thess. 5, 3. Cf. 1 Kgs. 15, 22-3 and 35. c  For the lament for Saul see 2 Kgs. 1, 11 and 17-27. The guilty sons were Amnon and Absalom (mourned at 2 Kgs. 13, 31 and 18, 33). The guiltless infant was David’s son by Bathsheba; for his reaction, see 2 Kgs. 12, 18-23. a 

b 

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He knew would shortly be brought back to life, but for the persistence of some persons in sin, as signified by the four-day burial of Lazarus.a Thus the vessel of election said he grieved for many whom he knew had departed this life not without sin.b That the letter phe is translated ‘I have erred’ or ‘I have opened mouth’ is in accord with the way of understanding these words that I have suggested; one who remembers that he has erred opens his mouth in confession, and sends down divisions of waters from his eyes, saying with the psalmist: My eyes have sent forth springs of water: because they have not kept thy law (Ps. 118, 136). 3, 49-51. Ain. My eye is afflicted, and hath not been quiet, because there was no rest till the Lord regarded and looked down from the heavens. My eye hath wasted my soul because of all the daughters of my city. These words can be explained historically as follows. The prophet, seeing his fellow citizens being given up to wholesale destruction, was not surprisingly afflicted in his mind. His mental agitation called forth unwearying tears, an acceptable sacrifice to God. When he says that his eye had not been quiet, he is expressing the idea that the tears of a just man weigh with God just as words do. And he adds the reason why his eye was not ceasing from tears: the misery of his fellow citizens did not let up at any hour, had rest at no moment. He was therefore determined that his eye should never have repose from the rain of weeping, until the Lord regarded from heaven, and dropped the dew of His mercy over them. And since, because their sins demanded it, God meanwhile forbore to open the doors of His clemency, he had planned to devote himself to groans. And this is the point of: My eye hath wasted my soul; the eye, drawing forth all the grief in the mind, poured it out in the form of tears, sweating away inward griefs in outward lamentation. There would, however, have been less reason for his groans if disasters like this had borne down only on the capital city Jerusalem. But as all the cities of Judaea, which a  b 

Cf. John 11, 17 and 35. For the four-day burial and sinning see I, 1, 10. Cf. Acts 9, 15; 2 Cor. 12, 21.

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he calls the daughters of his city, had fallen into the same plight, there was no consolation for such a degree of sadness. Allegorically, the church bewails the loss of her members and is afflicted because of their sins; for at times they incur grave offence while they dwell in this world, which provides motives for sinning without rest, that is, with no interruption. The ‘eye’ of the church (meaning love) therefore laments sinners. So these things are expressed by the letter ain, which is alsoa translated ‘fount’ or ‘eye’. For love is the fount and eye of all good things: ‘fount’ because it is the origin of the virtues, ‘eye’ because it is their guardian; just as it produces all the virtues by means of love of God and one’s neighbour, so by its discretion it guards against anyone being deceived by heedless compassion. As she has discretion,b the church passes over nothing in her members that she may punish with weeping, yet forgives much that she knows to have offended the gaze of God in His majesty. And throughout this life she is not quiet from preaching, until God should look down from heaven, and see, and visit this vineyard, so that He whose right hand planted her in this world may make her perfect in the future.c Until this happens, the eye of the church, that is love, in the meantime ever wastes her soul, by which we understand God’s mercy. For just as the soul quickens every body, so by His example Christ’s mercy gives life to the love of the church, so that, just as He endured death for the sake of sinners, so she may not neglect to lament for them. Thus it comes about that, in accordance with what the Lord said when He proclaimed that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent bear it away,d the church knocks violently at the door of God’s clemency on behalf of the penitent, and brings back frequent and noble plunder in the shape of sinners converted. Now by the daughters of the church universal you must understand individual churches all over the world, whose destruction their Mother laments throughout this life. This destruction Rather casually put. i.e. the ability to judge when to punish faults, when to overlook them; cf. III, 1-3, 17. c  Cf. Ps. 79, 15-16. d  Cf. Matt. 11, 12. a 

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results sometimes from the violence of secular princes, sometimes from the injustice of rulers of the church, sometimes too from the wicked lives of subjects. But now, to give these words a moral interpretation in accordance with the blessed Gregory,a the eye wastes the soul when it reports to the soul within the allurements that wait outside, so that, deceived by them, she presents herself as prey to the Devil. Now the ‘city’ of the soul is the assiduous guarding of God’s commandments. This city the wantoning eye invades like an enemy, leading away into pitiful captivity the soul’s virtues, that is, her daughters. For a man in such a plight the only remedy is to come to his senses one day and proclaim his mental affliction by copious weeping, not being quiet from confession nor resting from complaint, so that having in the past never paused in wrongdoing he may now lose no opportunity for grief. Thus, if the petitioner is importunate, the Lord, in accordance with His promise in the Gospel, will rise not out of friendship but because of his importunity, and bestow all that is necessary.b Suitable,c however, for praiseworthy importunity are the fount and the eye, two types of compunction. There is compunction for fear of hell, and compunction for the delay in winning glory:d the one slavish, the other filial. But by way of the slavish, which is called the fount because it is the origin of salvation, and which gives in to tears because it is frightened to be tortured by punishment, one arrives at the filial. For once the dirt of sin has been washed away, the eye of the mind, now cleansed, can sigh for eternal joys—and so it redoubles its laments. Here the attentive reader should note the pleasant interplay between the Hebrew letters and the beginnings of the sentences. To ain, which is translated ‘eye’, is attached the sentence My eye is afflicted, and with phe, meaning ‘I have opened mouth’, is associated They have opened their mouth against us (Lam. 3, 46). Cf. Moralia 21, 2. Cf. Luke 11, 8. c  Lit. ‘opportune’, giving word play. d  The glory, that is, of winning through to heaven by penitence, often mentioned by William; see esp. II, 18, 2 for its delay. a 

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One may observe this sort of thing in other places too, and marvel at it. 3, 52-54. Sade. They have chased me and caught me like enemiesa without cause. My life is fallen into the pit, they have laid a stone over me. Waters have flowed over my head; I said: I have perished. After so many complaints that have gone before, announcing the particular affliction of the prophet and the general affliction of the whole people, it is right that the letter sade, translated ‘consolation’, comes next. For the destruction of the mind, the harm to the body, the flood of tears, and (lastly) the insults of the enemy need the consolation of our most merciful Creator, if, that is, the sinner has bewailed his sins enough for him to have merciful justice bestowed upon him. And this chimes in with the letter sade, which signifies ‘justice’ or ‘consolation’. God consoles a man justly when he puts down to his own deserts the tribulations he suffers in the world, and tries to diminish them by continual laments. Yet these words, more clearly understood, bring no consolation so far as the historical sense is concerned; rather, they put more and more stress on the persecutions inflicted upon the prophet.b He had deserved the affection of the Jews both because that was their way,c and because he loved his country, and (more important) thanks to his gift of prophecy and his urgent prayers to God on their behalf. Yet they were far from showing affection. As fowlers, whose job it is, hunt a bird with springes, so they chained the prophet in fetters, like enemies, not fellow-citizens. ‘Without cause’, because, as I said, he had done them no wrong, except by freely proclaiming the Lord’s will and—if only they had weighed the matter calmly—the means to their salvation. Not content a  The Vulgate has ‘My enemies have chased me and caught me like a bird’. The corrector of B adds auem (‘bird’) after quasi (‘like’), to conform with the Vulgate (and Paschasius). It is hard to know whether to accept this plausible supplement. § 2 ‘quasi hostes’ and esp. § 4 ‘quasi inimici’ (‘like enemies’) point to omission of auem. Yet § 2 ‘as fowlers hunt a bird with springes’ and § 3 ‘with all the tricks of a fowler’ point the other way. b  Cf. Jer. 20, 2; 37, 14-15; 38, 6. c  It is hard to see why William, who so disliked the Jews, made this remark.

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with this, they thrust him into a filthy pit, and blocked the entrance with a stone to prevent him escaping. It is only human to feel pity as one imagines how he was often reduced to despair of his life in this place, afflicted as he was by damaging rains from the open air, as well as the dirt of the pit.a So because (as I said) we find no remedy of consolation in the historical sense, but rather rebuff, let us turn to an allegorical meaning. For we have here a clear prophecy of the Passion of Our Lord: this alone gives mortals consolation, this alone lightens the burden of the final judgement. Those who faithfully believe have no hesitation in enduring the loss of light here, since they have as reward for this Him who destroyed our death by dying, and restored our life by rising again.b The Jews chased Him with all the tricks of a fowler: with open abuse, when they said By the prince of devils he casteth out devils (Matt. 9, 34), and Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil (John 8, 48); by the arts of feigned flattery, in the cases of the woman taken in adultery and of the rendering of tribute to Caesar;c and much else that I think it unnecessary to list for the knowledgeable. In the end they caught Him, and bound Him with murder in their hearts, having first ‘chased’ the traitor disciple by a monetary arrangement,d acting like enemies, though they should have been His friends, if only because He had cured so many illnesses before their eyes. Yet He so valued them that He said He had been sent to them, and called them sons, compared with whom (He said) the Gentiles were dogs and unworthy to receive their bread.e He complains of this in the psalm: Instead of making me a return of love (that is, they ought to have loved Him), they detracted me (Ps. 108, 4). And in another place more explicitly, speaking either of the whole Jewish people or, as some prefer, Judas only: If my enemy had reviled me, I would verily have borne with it. And if he that hated me had spoken great things against me, I would perhaps have hidden myself from him. But thou a man of The Latin sentence is a little anacoluthic. Cf. n. on III, 16-18, 4. c  Cf. John 8, 3-11 and e.g. Matt. 22, 17-21. d  Cf. e.g. Matt. 26, 14-15. e  Cf. Matt. 15, 24 and 26. a 

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one mind, my guide, and my familiar, who didst take sweetmeats together with me: in the house of God we walked with consent (Ps. 54, 13-15), that is, sharing in one law, and frequenting one temple of God. In His subsequent prayer, He tells us to what a degree of punishment they were soon reduced: Let death come upon them, and let them go down alive into hell (Ps. 54, 16). For quite apart from the countless kinds of death by which they were consumed in the body, they went down alive into hell, given to a reprobate sense,a so as knowingly and with open eyes to commit sacrilege, by planning the death of Him whom they had seen to be a raiser of the dead, and grudging health to Him whom they knew to be a healer of the sick. They would deserve the curses of the entire human race merely for condemning to death an innocent member of their own clan—not to speak of the arbiter of life and death and the saviour of the dead. Being unable to deny this, they did not blush to confess it, saying at the Passion: He saved others; can he not save himself? (Matt. 27, 42). Their outrageous act is made still worse by the following ‘without cause’. Consistent with this is what He says in the Gospel: If I had not done among them the works that no other man hath done, they would not have sin; and again after a little: But that the word may be fulfilled which is written in their law: They hated me without cause (John 15, 24-25). What of the following verse? Does it not plainly foretell the Lord’s burial? My life is fallen into the pit, they have laid a stone over me. Of this through the psalmist: I am counted among them that go down to the pit: I am become as a man without help, free among the dead (Ps. 87, 5-6). And in the Gospel: He (of course meaning Joseph) rolled a great stone to the door of the monument, and went his way (Matt. 27, 60). For the Jews regarded Him as no more than an ordinary man: they had seen Him killed and shut up in the pit of a sepulchre. That was why they thought He had been abandoned, as they cried at the Passion: He trusted in God; let him now deliver him if he will (Matt. 27, 43). But He was ‘free among the dead’ because, though others when they die are held in a 

Cf. Rom. 1, 28.

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the earth’s greedy grasp until the day of resurrection, He alone, free at once and exempt from death, brought back from hell brilliant trophies of His triumph. The barbarous Jews did not know that He would do this: their wrath not yet satisfied, they sealed the stone and set guards,a as if to deny egress to Him when He rose again. So the old translation well says at this point: They brought down my life into the pit of death, they placed a stone against me.b But the words that follow in this sectionc cannot be made to fit Christ as head of the church. It is true that the flowing of waters might be said to be the onrush of the Jews; but so great a King could not suitably assert that He had perished. So there is a sudden move from head to members, such as the reader will very often find in the scriptures. It is therefore the church, as made up of the apostles, which says that the waters have flowed over her head: that is, the rabble of the Jewish party made a tumult against Christ. As a result, her weak and scarcely rooted faith soon shrivelled up, even the disciples confessing: We hoped that it was he that should have redeemed Israel (Luke 24, 21). For someone who says ‘hoped’, not ‘hope’, is admitting that he had believed, but believes no longer. When the Lord had scarcely been arrested, they ‘leaving Him, fled’.d Much more, when He was crucified and buried, did they lose any remnants of faith they had left. There was therefore need of the consolation of Christ’s resurrection and of the spirit, the Paraclete, to restore their faith. As I said,e sade is translated ‘consolation’; and neither kind of consolation was slow to come to them. Christ, after spurning the law of hell and rising, at once poured out on them in person the Paraclete, that is the consoler, with the breath of His holy mouth;f and after the Ascension He sent the same consoler from heaven in the form of fire.g As the Cf. Matt. 27, 66. We know this version e.g. from Ps. Gregory the Great, Respons. col. 761D. See III, 58-60, 3 n. c  i.e. v. 54. capitulum, used only here in the commentary, appears to refer to the group of verses headed sade. d  Cf. Matt. 26, 56. e  III, 52-54, 1. f  Cf. John 20, 22. g  Cf. Acts 2, 3-4. a 

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sound of the apostles went forth into all the earth,a the justices of the Lord (another meaning of sade) marched into the world, and with them His precepts, bringing light to the eyes of the heart. 3, 55-57. Coph. I have called upon thy name, O Lord, from the lowest pit. Thou hast heard my voice; turn not away thy ear from my sighs and cries. Thou drewest near in the day when I called upon thee; thou saidst: Fear not. These are words spoken by Christ’s soul in hell, grieving as men do at her parting from the body, and longing for the glory of the resurrection. In her longing she calls on the name of God the Father, and clamours in His ears her cry to bring her back to life again quickly. In an earlier verse He said that His life had fallen into the pit of the sepulchre, so He does well now to sigh away His soul in ‘the lowest pit’, that is, of hell. Now this is His reaction as a human being. In His divine nature, however, He knew that He was beyond doubt being heard by the Father, and that His body would at once be brought back to life. So next comes: Thou drewest near in the day when I called upon thee, thou saidst: Fear not. Similarly at the raising of Lazarus: He makes His request as a man might, saying: Father, I give thee thanks that thou hearest me always. But then, hinting at His divine nature, He adds: And I knew that thou hearest me always; but because of the people who stand about have I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me (John 11, 41-42). Thus in hell He in His human capacity asks to be freed from that shutting up, but in His divinity He triumphantly brings back the holy men long shut up there. Wherefore the letter coph means ‘shutting up’ or ‘calling’ or ‘look’. This can only mean that God the Father, when His Son’s soul was shut up in hell, listened to her call, at once looked, and brought her out. Similarly, the church of the early believers, which previously had its faith shaken and said ‘I have perished’, now turns to prayer and begs God not to let her remain in the lowest pit, that is, the last stage of despair. She says that she knows that He hears her voice as she prays, but that she prays Him not to delay putting into a 

Rom. 10, 18, citing Ps. 18, 5.

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effect the desire of His groaning suppliant. Scarcely is the prayer finished, when she boasts that she has been heard, and that she has been placed on a solid footing of joy, all fear of present or future ills removed. This is what she means by: Thou drewest near in the day when I called upon thee; thou saidst: Fear not. For every day God comes to the aid of the church in her tribulation with the consolations of the scriptures, and relieves her fear and panic sooner than she can hope. He did this in the case of the apostles too, when Christ was straightway brought back to life, and on some occasions in later years, when a swift and fearful death carried off those responsible for persecuting the church. Thus when she most grieved to be shut up in the nets of her straits, she rejoiced to find herself freed as soon as she started to call on the clemency of God. And the same is said of the soul, which falls into the pit when she begins to sin, and is plunged in the lowest pit when she does not cease from sinning. If she turns and groans with all her heart, surely God will not turn away His ear from her sighs and cries. And in the day when she calls upon Him, she will feel the presence of Him who said: I am drawing nigh, and not from afar (Jer. 23, 23), and also: ‘Before you call upon me, behold I am here.’a Thus if she were to stop misbehaving and not neglect to pray, she would find herself freed forthwith by God’s grace, after all her groans at being enveloped in the pollution of vice. 3, 58-60. Res. Thou hast judged, O Lord, the cause of my soul, thou the Redeemer of my life. Thou hast seen, O Lord, iniquity against me; judge thou my judgment. Thou hast seen all their fury, and all their thoughts against me. Like an orator the prophet tries to win the judge’s good will by appeal to the justice of his cause, and heightens his complaint by stressing the wickedness of his persecutors:b the more so because he proclaims that nothing escapes the notice of God, who sees clearly both the cause of the innocent soul, unjustly afflicted, Reg. Ben. (see III, 22-24, 6). Cf. e.g. Cicero, Inu. 1, 22 (good will sought from the person of the opponents and from the case). a 

b 

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and the wickedness of those who unjustly persecute her. May then the Judgea of things pronounce a just sentence on those who, as is known, attacked the prophet in madness of thought and deed. Taken allegorically, the whole context here refers to Christ and the church, that is, to the head and the members, joined close together as they are by the bond of love. For, in the apostle’s words, we are all one body in Christ, and every one members one of another (Rom. 12, 5). Further, as the apostle says, the head of the church is Christ,b and the head of Christ is God.c So too res is translated ‘head’ or ‘primacy’. For He is the head of the church, containing her and joining her to Himself; He is her primate, that she walks in His footsteps, and much chastising her by adversities. Concerning this was said: Christ suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps. Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth (1 Pet. 2, 21-22). That is why He says here that the Father judged the cause of His soul, justly exacting penalties from the people which had condemned Him by an illomened judgement. The addition Redeemer of my life relates to the church, whose life, when ‘sold under sin’,d He, who is the head of the church, restored by His death. But we can also connect the phrase with our own head [Christ], because God the Father on the third day gave new form to the life of His body, which had been snuffed out by the malevolence of the Jews, for the redemption of the human race. For our Lord and Redeemer, by the love with which He redeemed us, Himself made His life ours, so that, in His own words, just as He lives through the Father,e so we may live through Him. But the old translation,f ‘Defender of my life’, fits both head and body. For God defended the life of our Re-

Cognitor here combines the idea of God as judge and as all-knowing. Cf. Eph. 5, 23. c  Cf. 1 Cor. 11, 3. d  Cf. Rom. 7, 14. e  Cf. John 6, 58. f  A liturgical variant (Resp. Rom. 3518). It is interesting that William regards such readings as ‘old’; the Beuron editors similarly include them as witnesses to the Vetus Latina. See also III, 52-54, 6 n. a 

b 

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deemer, by raising His body on the third day; but He also defends our life by raising us together with Him in His mercy. But what follows repeats the former idea: because God the Father ‘knoweth the thoughts of men, that they are vain’,a and witnessed the iniquitous fury of His enemies against His Son, who had actually led His life among them as a man, He should not delay to pass a heavy sentence upon them. But since the Son Himself holds the primacy of the church, as being her head (for He is ‘the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth’),b we can also refer to the church this desire for requital. For in Revelations too we see the souls of the holy crying to God: Why dost thou not defend our blood? (Rev. 6, 10). So too the church, pressed in the past by the persecutions of Gentiles and heretics, knew that her straits did not escape the notice of Him for whom things hidden do not go unseen, and who is ‘a helper in due time in tribulation’.c And so she used to invoke swift punishment on those who assailed her not on a reasoned judgement but out of uncontrolled fury. God in fact did thisd more than once, bringing all her persecutors to a brief and cruel end. I shall touch on the first and last instances, passing over those in between. Nero, standard-bearer of the anti-Christian faction, stabbed himself with a dagger. Domitian ended his blood-stained life at the hands of his household staff. Diocletian committed suicide after abdicating. Maximianus, caught in the act by his son-in-law on the information of his daughter, paid for his treacherous liaison by the sword. Maximinus, cruellest of all according to the blessed Jerome,e fatally brought up fragments of his lung as a result of internal purulence.f As to the death of Julian, what need to speak, when it is sung in the streets, so appalling was his fate? Punishment also affected the heretical emperors, Constantius and Valens; the former was trouCf. Ps. 93, 11. Cf. Rev. 1, 5. c  Cf. Ps. 9, 10. d  i.e. reacted to the vengeful prayers of the church. e  Cf. Jerome, In Zach. 3, 14, 12. f  Cf. Jerome, In Naum 3, 1-4. a 

b 

308

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III, 58-60 (3.) – III, 61-63 (2.)

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bled all his life by wars civil and external, while the latter, after fleeing from the war against the Goths, was burned to cinders in a hut.a It has been observed that none of the persecuting emperors ended his life as men normally do, except for Trajan, who is recorded to have relaxed the severity of his persecution and in the end (according to Plinius Secundus) to have modified a bloody edict.b The church has often seen such punishments, and is glad to proclaim: Thou hast judged, O Lord, the cause of my soul, and the rest. 3, 61-63. Sin. Thou hast heard their reproaches, O Lord, all their imaginations against me: the lips of them that rise up against me, and their devices against me all the day. Behold their sitting down and their rising up; I am their song. The prophet goes on treating Christ’s Passion; our Lord speaks as before. His complaint, concerning the malevolence of the Jews, is addressed to God the Father, to whose judgement He refers His cause, speaking as a man (for He had taken on human form). He says that He has heard their reproaches, just as He had said before that He has seen their fury,c attributing human feelings to God, for whom hearing is the same as seeing, as being, as living. Therefore, addressing Him from whom nothing is hidden, He asserts the injustice of the cause of those who had treacherously oppressed Him in His innocence. His Father (He says) had heard their reproaches: Thou hast a devil (John 8, 48) and at the Cross: He saved others; himself he cannot save (Matt. 27, 42), and much in the same vein; and not only had He heard what they said, but His divine eye had penetrated their imaginations against Him. Accordingly, when the Pharisees murmured against Him (for saying to the man sick of the palsy, when he was about to be healed: Son, thy sins are forgiven thee), with the words He blasphemest, the Son Himself repelled their impudence with a  William’s thesis in this passage is that of Lactantius’ De mortibus persecutorum, but the details seem largely to come from Ps. Aurelius Victor. Cf. also III, 64-66, 7. b  Cf. Tertullian, Apol. 2, 6-7 alluding to Pliny, Epist. 10, 96-97. c  Lam. 3, 60.

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the words: Why do you think evil in your hearts? (Matt. 9, 2-4). As easily as we hear words, the ear of God detected the thoughts of the malign. As for the following words, The lips of them that rise up , and their devices against me all the day, they repeat what went before. For Christ is speaking of the lips of which the psalmist says: Deceitful lips, with a double heart have they spoken (Ps. 11, 3): the deceitful man says one thing with his lips and mouth, but turns over another in his heart. The Jews in fact employed botha against the Lord, often trying to trap Him with deceits and flatteries, but at the end crying out with undisguised hatred: Crucify, crucify (e.g. Luke 23, 21). All the day: that is, all the time He preached, or the whole day of parasceveb on which they imagined they had won their victory. He further asks God the Father to behold their sitting down and their rising up against Him, signifying by ‘sitting down’ the priests and scribes sitting on benches as judges do, when they condemned Him to death, and also that Pilate passed sentence in the place of judgement;c and by ‘rising up’ their fury when they leapt up from their seats on hearing His replies. So in the Gospel of Mark: And some rising up, bore false witness against him (Mark 14, 57). I am their song. This resembles what the psalmist says: They that sat in the gate spoke against me: and they that drank wine made me their song (Ps. 68, 13). For it was at the gates of cities that judges used to sit in the old days, for the convenience of those travelling there, so that, having easy access to those giving judgement they could go home the moment their business was complete.d The Jews therefore sat as judges against the Lord, and it can well be believed that on the day when they vaunted their victory over Him, particularly considering the Easter festivities, they drenched themselves with a good deal of wine, and amidst the drinking sang in their delight at having won. i.e. they both hid things in their hearts and openly expressed them. Cf. e.g. John 19, 14. c  Cf. e.g. Matt. 27, 19. d  Cf. V, 11-14, 1. a 

b 

310

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4.

III, 61-63 (2.-7.)

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6.

7.

These things are expressed by the letter sin, which is translated ‘of teeth’ or ‘upon wound’. Elsewhere in Holy Scripture ‘teeth’ means holy teachers, who as it were chew up and bring into the body of Christ or the church those whom they round up by their preaching. Hence to the first shepherd was said: Arise, Peter; kill and eat (Acts 10, 13). Of them is said in the Song of Songs: Thy teeth as a flock of sheep, that are shorn, which have come up from the washing (S. of S. 4, 2). For the holy preachers are like a flock of holy souls, shorn of the superfluities of this world and washed clean by tears of compunction. In our passage, however, ‘teeth’ signifies the sacrilegious hissing directed by the Jews against Christ; they sharpened the molars in their jaws against Him, carping with envenomed tongues at His words and deeds. Of this is said: Their teeth are weapons and arrows, their tongue a sharp sword (Ps. 56, 5). Sin is also translated ‘upon wound’ to express what Christ says through the psalmist: They have added to the grief of my wounds (Ps. 68, 27). For the Jews, not content with having wounded and crucified Him, also assailed Him with abusive words as He hung there. Or we may understand it thus: though He was pained, as a man, by the wounds inflicted on Him, He was more agonised when, because of the perdition they were incurring, He felt the wound of love, thanks to the clemency with the bowels of which He abounded and abounds. For there is a health-giving wound of compunction, but another of love. The Bride says of this in the Song of Songs: I am wounded with charity (S. of S. 2, 5 = 5, 8 VL). And the Bridegroom says to her: Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse (S. of S. 4, 9). And because (as I have often said)a in this alphabet the affairs of Christ and of the church are at one time treated together, at another separately, these words may be referred to the church: what Christ said against the Jews she is to say against the pagans. For they, seeing her in distress, hurled frequent reproaches at her, saying: Where is thy God?’ b They ‘imagined’ sacrilegious assaults on her, hoping to overthrow her by doing her harm if they could not succeed by guile. They wheta  b 

Cf. esp. III, prol., 4. Cf. Ps. 41, 4.

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ted their lips against her,a even composing books to misrepresent our faith. They sat against her like judges, and rose up like lions.b They gnashed upon her with their teeth,c and added wound upon wound, harassing with blows those they could not corrupt with words: finally songs to slander her, when Maximinus, of whom I spoke before,d ordered the publication of false stories about Christ, so that children learning to read and write might imbibe them with their mothers’ milk. Even the elect were caused to stumble, so far as that was possible for them. No wonder then if the church tearfully brought her case before God, longing to ask for help from heaven. 3, 64-66. Thau. Render them a recompense, O Lord, according to the works of their hands. Thou shalt give them a buckler of heart, thy labour. Thou shalt persecute them in anger, and shalt destroy them under the heavens, O Lord. Thau, twenty-second and last of the Hebrew letters, is sometimes used of good, sometimes of bad. Of good by Ezekiel, when after the slaughter of the people of Jerusalem they are ordered to have the foreheads of the men that sigh ‘signed’ with the letter thau,e as repenting for their sins: appropriately, for it means ‘signs’ and also has the shape of the Cross, two arms with a stem below. Hence also Simeon says that the Lord was set for a sign which shall be contradicted (Luke 2, 34); of whom the prophet too says: The Lord shall raise up a sign among nations far off (Isa. 11, 12), and also: The Lord shall be named for an everlasting sign (Isa. 55, 13). He who looks to this sign shall not perish: such is the promise of the Lord, who proclaims that He is to be lifted up as Moses had lifted up the serpent in the desert,f whose appearance had brought health back to those who had been brought damage by the fiery serpents.g Cf. Ps. 63, 4. Cf. Ps. 26, 12: ‘unjust witnesses have risen up against me.’ c  Cf. Ps. 34, 16. d  Cf. III, 13-15, 8 with n. (also III, 58-60, 5). e  Cf. Ezek. 9, 4. f  Cf. John 3, 14. g  Cf. Num. 21, 6 and 9. a 

b 

312

1.

2.

III, 61-63 (7.) – III, 64-66 (4.)

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4.

But in our passage thau stands for evil. As well as the translation given above, it is also rendered ‘erred’ and ‘consummated’. Combining the three, ‘mark erred consummated’, we can explain thus: Mark,a careful reader, and note how much the Jewish people erred when it consummated the wickedness of its thoughts. For this the Saviour reproaches them: Fill up ye also the measure of your fathers (Matt. 23, 32). For their fathers had ‘killed the prophets’,b and they themselves, being men of consummate iniquity, filled up their malice by crucifying the Messiah. So either the prophet or the Lord asks, not in any spirit of malevolence but making a valid prediction, that retribution for their deeds may be paid out to them: Render them a recompense, O Lord, according to the works of their hands. With this David agrees when he says: Give them according to their works, and according to the wickedness of their inventions. And he adds the reason: Because they have not understood the works of the Lord: and in the works of their hands destroy them, and thou shalt not build them up (Ps. 27, 4-5). For because they did not wish to understand that the Lord came to them to build them up in good, they paid the penalty of their sin by being blinded and destroyed, and fell into the pit they had dug.c Sacrilegious was the counsel on which they entered, saying: If we let him alone so, all will believe in him; and the Romans will come, and take away our place and nation (John 11, 48). On the contrary, this cunning plan resulted in their downfall: just because they did not let Him alone thus, all nations believed in Him, and when the Romans invaded they lost their nation and place. The Jews’ misery is increased by what comes next: Thou shalt give them a buckler of heart, thy labour. The labour which Christ suffered in the flesh, of hunger and thirst, and finally death too, was a great barrier and as it were a kind of shield protecting the hardness of the Jews’ disbelief,d and preventing their hearts from being penetrated by any darts of love, or softened by any poultices of preaching. For, as the book of Wisdom has it, their own malice signa is now taken as an imperative verb; see I, 21, 1 n. Cf. Matt. 23, 31. c  Cf. Ps. 7, 16. d  See below, § 7 n. a 

b 

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blinded them (Wisd. 2, 21). Having stubbornly refused to understand the obvious miracles wrought by God, they were blinded by His just judgement to the things that might have been their cure. Alternatively, God’s ‘labour’ is His own patience, when, provoked by men’s misbehaviour, He has already stretched out His right hand,a yet in a manner does violence to justice, by putting off sentencing them to punishment. Of this He says through Isaiah: I have laboured bearing them (Isa. 1, 14). Seeing this patience the wicked hold their Maker in contempt, though they ought to have been the more humbly subservient for this reason. It would have been reasonable to embrace His long-suffering the more, just because they knew Him to be able to punish, but to be unwilling to do so. But His ‘labour’, by which He restrains Himself from punishing, is for them a ‘buckler of heart’, as it makes them the more reckless to commit crimes because God’s patience calmly awaits them. And since the Jews have surpassed in constancy of crime all men who have ever lived or shall live, the Lord, or the prophet, rightly prays for the most extreme of punishments for them: Thou shalt persecute them in anger, and shall destroy them from under the heavens, O Lord. We should first observe here that the two final verses,b being phrased in the future tense, not the imperative, make it quite clear that all the curses previously heaped upon them were a prediction, not a wish. God persecuted the Jews for their contumacious outrages, here and in the future. Here, by delivering them into the hands of their enemies, the Chaldeans, the Macedonians, and finally the Romans. What arrogance those peoples displayed in abusing the licence of their victory is told in history. Titus, having sold into slavery the women and the males weaker because of their age, chose stronger ones to expose to the beasts or lead in his triumph.c Hadrian, equally, in later years took offence at their rebellion and rased the city to the ground; and though he re-built it in part, he grudged them the old name of a  Perhaps alluding to Isa. 14, 27 ‘His hand is stretched out: and who shall turn it away?’. b  William means the two clauses just cited. See I, 2, 1 n. c  Cf. Ps. Rufinus, Ios. Bell. Iud. 7, 16 (p. 316v); also III, 43-45, 4.

314

5.

III, 64-66 (4.-7.)

6.

7.

Jerusalem and gave orders for it to be called Aelia from his own cognomen,a forbidding entry to all of the Jewish race. Hence the blessed Jerome claims that right up to his own day the custom was observed that, on the anniversary of the fall of Jerusalem, the Jews who came to mark the day had to pay a high price to the soldiery in charge of the place to be licenced to make their laments there.b And even today, as I have often said,c the Jews are to all nations and persuasions as it were a prodigy, to all a mockery: so true is it that God has persecuted them here, and still does so. But in future He will persecute them without remedy, saying: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire (Matt. 25, 41). In doing this without sparing them, He seems to be persecuting them in anger, though (according to the book of Wisdom) He, in accordance with His nature, judges all things with tranquillity (Wisd. 12, 18). He therefore, as if in anger, renders a recompense to those who in their own anger laid hands on the Saviour. For He destroys them ‘under the heavens’, that is in hell and on earth, so that all chance of rising to heaven is denied to a nation which has never sought for heavenly things. As a result the prophet says in another passage: With a double destruction, destroy them, Lord (Jer. 17, 18). Therefore they have been destroyed doubly, in body and soul, in hell and on earth, for they have lost both the soil of their fatherland and any means of returning to heaven. If anyone were to understand all this as referring to the church, I think he will not be far wrong. For she wished on the pagans what the prophet or Christ said against the Jews. Accordingly, God rendered them equally a recompense according to the works of their hands, by punishing with a terrible death all those responsible for the persecutions.d And since they held God’s patience before their hearts, as the buckler of their disbelief, to prevent them In fact his gentile name. For Hadrian’s treatment of Jerusalem, see Orosius, Hist. 7, 13, 5; but William’s account is flawed (compare also IV, 11, 1; V, 7, 1). It was Titus who destroyed the temple and the walls; Hadrian rebuilt the place to plant a colony. b  Cf. Jerome, In Soph. 1 (pp. 673, 668-83). c  Cf. I, 17, 4; II, 6, 2. d  Cf. III, 58-60, 5. a 

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believing,a He persecuted them and destroyed them so that they did not long remain in this world, and in the future perished for evermore. But since ‘I have completed a long course of laps over the plain’,b and by the mercy of God have reached harbour of the third alphabet, let me here bring the book to an end at last, so that my will, refreshed by a period of silence, may rise with the more alacrity to make a start on the fourth.

a  Cf. two earlier passages in III, 64-66, 4: ‘The labour which Christ suffered in the flesh, of hunger and thirst, and finally death too, was a great barrier and as it were a kind of shield protecting the hardness of the Jews’ disbelief, and preventing their hearts from being penetrated by any darts of love’ and especially: ‘But His “labour”, by which He restrains Himself from punishing, is for them a “buckler of heart”, as it makes them the more reckless to commit crimes because God’s patience calmly awaits them’. There is some resemblance to Gregory the Great, Moral. 33, 28 (pp. 1716-1717). b  Cf. Vergil, Georg. 2, 541.

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Book Four IV,

Prologue 1.

2.

Now that I have by God’s grace completed the greater part of the laborious work I have undertaken, I am warmed by a livelier hope that I may with the same Guide to lead me complete what is left of my journey. It is for the attentive and kindly reader to judge if he is gaining any profit from what I have to say. Meantime, as for myself (I have said this elsewhere),a I measure the advantage I receive thus: while I am engaged in this task, I can have nothing in my mind that might harm my soul. In my view, it greatly conduces to the amendment of behaviour if someone who cannot do good things may at least learn to keep clear of bad. What is more, there creeps up on me at times a spark of good fruit, so that I am pricked by my own words as I sweat over the depiction of others’ troubles. Who could be so stony-hearted as not often to burst into tears, even against his will, as he bewails the woes of a most flourishing city, or ponders the ruin of the church universal, or thinks of the damage done to his own soul? I have traced this triple path of understanding in three alphabets, and shall not fail to follow it in the fourth. In this one, so far as I can judge from the elegant translation, Jeremiah seems to have followed up his intention more subtly and taken more pains with his expression. So now let me enter on these deep waters, with (as I wish and ask) the Holy Spirit filling my sails. a 

Cf. II, prol., 1.

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4, 1. How is the gold become dim, the finest colour is changed! the stones of the sanctuary are scattered in the top of every street. The prophet expresses painful surprise that the brilliant distinction of the patriarchs has been discoloured by unworthy descendants. Those men had a vigorous faith, which lit up as with a golden sheen even those far away. They had upright morals, that attracted their neighbours towards the good by setting an attractive example. But then, as I say, their posterity deteriorated, blackened by lack of belief and evil manners; everything was discoloured, everything thrown into confusion. God had cemented them together like choice stones to form a unified city, to protect and at the same time to give beauty to His sanctuary. But, as they well deserved, they were scattered through the whole breadth of the world (‘street’ [platea] is translated ‘breadth’), and all nations mock and shun them. Still, it is possible to take this straightforwardly in the historical sense: a great store of gold, together with coloured jewels, contributed as temple offerings by different donors, was then taken away by foreigners for their own purposes, and hence, because of the unworthiness of the people misusing them, lost their prized value and colour. It is certainly a fact that Nebuchadnezzar stole highly valuable vessels from the Lord’s temple and thrust them into the shrine at Babylon, though Cyrus king of the Persians ordered some part to be brought back.a It is likely too that the stones making up the sanctuary, dislodged by enemy siege-engines, lay about in the tops and corners of the streets, making clear that the Chaldeans had been at work. I do not claim for myself the credit for an allegorical explanation of these words, but shall cite sermonsb of the blessed Gregory.c Addressing bishops,d he says: ‘Let us invoke the tears of Jeremiah, Cf. 1 Ezra 1, 7-11. sermones is ambigous: William here quotes from a sermon, and a second is cited in § 9 (admittedly not one that has any relevance to our lemma). But no more than ‘words’ may be meant; there is a similar problem at GP 196, 5. See also I, 6, 4 n. c  In evang. 17, 15. d  The title of the sermon includes the words ‘ad episcopos’. a 

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IV, 1 (1.-5.)

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who has our death in mind when he says, weeping: How is the gold become dim, the finest colour is changed, the stones of the sanctuary are scattered [as above]. The gold is become dim because the life of priests, once shining with the glory of their virtues, is now shown by their low actions to be spurious. The finest colour is changed because their state of holiness has come to be disgraced and despised thanks to their earthly and transitory works. As for the stones of the sanctuary, they were kept within, and were not worn on the body of the chief priest except when he entered the holy of holies and “appeared” alone in private with his Maker. We, therefore, dearest brethren, we are the stones of the sanctuary. We should have always “appeared” alone with God, for we must never be seen outside, that is, in external actions. But “the stones of the sanctuary are scattered in the top of every street” because those who should always have been inside thanks to their way of life and their prayer are in fact outside, idling away a false existence. Look! There is now almost no secular activity that is not administered by priests. When, despite their holy state, they show only what is external, they lie like the stones of the sanctuary in the streets, when all the religious follow the broad ways of the world.a And they are scattered not just in the streets but in the top of every street, because they act out of desire for this world, but at the same time look to their religious position to win them the highest honour. Thus they are scattered in the top of the streets, since they lie on the ground as a result of the lowly works they do, while wishing to be honoured because of their outward appearance of sanctity.’ This is what the excellent pope says about the priests of his time. Everybody knows that all this has grown much worse in our day. As to the moral sense, the ‘gold’ of the soul is its chief driving force, made up of understanding, memory and reason.b Its ‘finest colour’ is holiness of conduct, which consists of humility, patience and the other virtues. The soul itself, if it should live a good life, is God’s sanctuary and the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. Of The sentence reads inelegantly because William has taken out Gregory’s remark on the etymology of platea and used it earlier (see IV, 1, 1). b  Contrast the three ‘dignities’ at I, 1, 6: ‘understanding, will and memory’. a 

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this the apostle says: Know you not, that you are the temple of God, and that the Holy Spirit dwelleth in you? (1 Cor. 3, 16). The stones of this sanctuary are the virtues I have listed, which cement it together and prop it up, so that it rises to form the building of which the same apostle said: You are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone: in whom all the building, being framed together, groweth up into an holy temple in the Lord (Eph. 2, 20-21). This work of building goes forward well when the soul remains properly ordered, using intellect to understand and reason to discern for what purpose she was made, while remembering that purpose constantly. It is only then that she shines in the sight of God as being something much more valuable than gold; just as a lovely colour attracts the eyes of the beholder, so by her delightful sweetness she attracts men’s minds to imitate her. But sometimes the ‘gold’ is dimmed, if a soul loses her understanding and reason and memory, or if, though still having them all, she misuses them, examining and understanding with perverted reason, grasping and remembering goods earthly rather than divine, fleeting rather than lasting. Conscious that all is over with a soul like this, the prophet cries: How is the gold become dim! Her finest colour is changed, too, when she abandons the likenessa of God to which she was made, and wanders off into external loves. For just as the ‘image’ of God, according to which, as we read in Genesis, the human soul was made,b is understood with reference to her essential nature, so His ‘likeness’ has reference to morals: Let us make man to our image and likeness (Gen. 1, 26). ‘Image’, in order that, just as God is one and has three persons, so the human soul, in substance one, may have understanding, reason and memory.c ‘Likeness’, in order that, just as God is merciful and humble and patient, and endowed with the other virtues, so the soul of man may in her small way clothe herself in the same virtues and feel ashamed to follow a different route. So when she a  The meaning becomes clearer when William comes to cite the passage of Genesis that lies behind his discussion. b  Gen. 1, 27. c  Compare I, 1, 6.

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has taken on a character that has lost the colour given by the likeness of her Maker,a she who was once ‘in honour’ is now, thanks to her unwillingness to understand how to act well, ‘compared to senseless beasts, and is become like to them’.b Like brute beasts, she longs only for the earthly, rejecting the heavenly things to attain which she had been made. In this way she has lost the likeness of God, though she in one way or another retains His image.c Her stones, too, that should have been the sanctuary of God, ‘are scattered in the top of every street’. For they are the stones of which the prophet says: Living stones will roll upon the earth (Zech. 9, 16), and the apostle: You also as living stones are built upon spiritual houses (1 Pet. 2, 5). Also another prophet says of the soul and the church: I will lay thy foundations with sapphires, and I will make thy bulwarks of jasper (Isa. 54, 11-12). Sapphire, coloured like the sky, signifies desire for heaven, which, second only to faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, is the foundation of all good things. Why does a man restrain himself from being seduced by the pleasures of this world if not out of hope for reward in heaven? Jasper, which is green, and drives away phantasms, appropriately displays the pleasant green hue of chastity, which by day but also by night dispels the illusions of fantasy from the bed of modesty. This is the surest bulwark of the good, for without chastity, as the blessed Gregory testifies,d no good work can be welcome in the eyes of God. But these stones of the sanctuary of God are scattered in the top of every street when the soul, stepping aside from the strait way that leads to life, sets foot on the broad way that leads to death.e Instead of longing for heaven, she becomes enslaved to the filthy pleasures of the earth’s dirt. Instead of the sheen of chastity, she yields to the stink of lust, and in the end lapses into every kind of vice.

I take this to be the sense. With the locution ‘decoloros a similitudine’ compare perhaps II, 1, 8 (II, 110) ‘tenebrescat a lumine’, with n. b  Cf. Ps. 48, 13 = 21. c  That is, she retains her tripartite make-up, but has lost her virtues. d  In evang. 13, 1. e  Cf. Matt. 7, 13-14. a 

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4, 2. The noble sons of Sion, and they that were clothed with the first gold, how are they esteemed as earthen vessels, the work of the potter’s hands? It is well known that the Jews were noble beyond all other nations, and that the foremost among them, by virtue of their great city, were the people of Jerusalem. They were exalted by the authority of their ancestors, by their inheritance of the promised land, and, most important, by their correct belief in God. shows this figuratively when he says: And clothed with the first gold. For just as gold is first and most precious of all metals, so faith is first of all virtues. Nobly clothed with this of old, they would surely have been the most renowned of peoples if they had not first clouded over their faith by doing evil, and in the end cast it off altogether. But after exchanging faith for faithlessness, they were ‘esteemed as earthen vessels, the work of the potter’s hands’. By the same token as you understand ‘gold’ as ‘faith’, you should take a pot that is shaped from mud to mean ‘lack of faith’. Just as nothing is more worthless than mud by the feet of passing men and pack animals, so nothing is more trodden underfoot than a man who has lost his faith. Now lack of faith is ‘the work of the potter’s hand’, that is, of the Devil. For the word ‘potter’ [ figulus] is derived from ‘shaping’ [ fingendo]; and who is a more lying deceiver [ fictor] than the Devil? He never openly shows his malevolence to the faithless he tries to ensnare, but by shaping [ figmento] of the truth he foists falsehoods on them by complex twists and turns. we might take the words straightforwardly: the sons of Sion, beyond doubt the wealthiest of all the Jews, had on display an abundance of shining metal, both in the decoration of the temple and in their elaborate clothing and ostentatious vessels. But they were reduced to ‘earthen vessels’ when, under the stress of captivity, they were happy indeed if, clad in old rags, they had pottery in which to serve their food. Equally, ‘Sion’ is understood as the church, which, set upon her look-out place of the virtues, ascends towards heavenly things by her prayers. Her sons are ‘noble’ as being endowed with sincere faith and zeal for good works. They are also ‘clothed with the first

322

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IV, 2 (1.) – IV, 3 (1.)

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gold’, that is, they are on every side shielded by knowledge of Holy Writ against the fiery darts of the Enemy. That by ‘gold’ is meant wisdom is readily shown by the saying: The treasure to be desired resteth in the mouth of the wise (Prov. 21, 20 + 14, 33). Lay wisdom, indeed, can be called ‘gold’, but ‘first gold’ means knowledge of Holy Scripture. But the sons of the church, whether in large numbers or as individuals, lose their wits and become ‘earthen vessels’ when they put in second place the gold of the scriptures and wallow ‘in the mud of many waters’,a that is, in the filth of earthly thoughts. The blessed Gregory, as I showed above,b witnesses to this having been true in his times too; and it is a common sight today. But this is ‘the work of the potter’s hand’, that of the Deceiver, that flattering cheat. For why do priests administer secular business unless because the Devil flatteringly suggests a pious pretext, to relieve their relatives or beautify their churches with layers of marble and ostentatious draperies? Why does a monk extort moneys on a grand scale unless because the Devil supplies the enticing notion of serving the interests of his poverty-stricken monastery or coming to the aid of indigent pilgrims? Why does a nun risk the shipwreck of her modesty by putting on elaborate clothes, unless because the Devil puts it into her head to summon up lovers by these means, hoping by their generosity to pass her life comfortably, whereas now she can merely support it on cheap bread? The soul, then, if she is wise, should beware lest the hand of the most cruel potter creep in and persuade her to handle mud, though she ought to have shone red like gold because of her likeness to God. 4, 3. Even the sea monsters have bared the breast, they have given suck to their young. The daughter of my people is cruel, like the ostrich in the desert. The meaning of these words, taken historically, appears to be as follows. The mothers of unfortunate young children, worn out by hunger and thirst and hence carrying round dry breasts, began to deny milk to their sucklings. Because of their lack of milk, they a  b 

Cf. Hab. 3, 15. Cf. IV, 1, 3-4 (IV, 26-49).

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became as savage as ostriches, which are said not to sit on their eggs in the desert, but to expose them to wind and sun. (The ostrich is a large-limbed bird, winged but flightless. We sawa such a one in England in the time of King Henry, that keen collector of prodigious exotica.) Further, the blessed prophet stresses the mothers’ cruelty by comparing them to sea monsters. For the lamia is the most savage of beasts: she is said to tear her young apart [laniare]. Indeed this is why she is called lamia (compare lania).b But at times she feels a natural love for the offspring of her womb, and does not neglect to give them suck. Yet these captive women had the hardihood to look on as their sucklings died of hunger, either (as I said) for lack of milk or because Jews are savage by nature. Allegorically, scribes and Pharisees are under attack, but also (more to my point) teachers of the church who grudge their flocks the milk of doctrine; for thanks to their neglect those whom they should have nurtured in the good go to ruin. Of such people the Lord says: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, for you have taken away the key of knowledge: you yourselves have not entered in, nor have you allowed others to enter,c and the prophet: Dumb dogs not able to bark (Isa. 56, 10). These teachers neglect their eggs like ostriches when they do not trouble to give the milk of their teachings to those born from the womb of the church. It very often happens that, if they do ever remember their duty and open their mouths, they are not heard at all gladly, because their behaviour clashes with their teaching. For just as the ostrich can boast of large limbs but little virtue, so they, while thundering out their eloquence from rattling cheeks,d undermine the good things they have to say by their evil deeds. The ostrich has wings, but no flight; they give a show of religion, but are weighed down by earthly cares, and in their concentration on them are robbed of the benefits of contemplation. Of such people the Lord says: They bind heavy and a  It is possible that this means: ‘we have seen one in the time of the [present] king, Henry.’ See above, p. 11. b  A lanio is a butcher. c  Confected from Matt. 23, 13 and Luke 11, 52. d  A phrase used by Augustine, that seems to clash with the image of thunder.

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insupportable burdens, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but with a finger of their own they will not move them (Matt. 23, 4). For (to quote the apostle) they go around and devour the houses of widows (Mark 12, 40 = Luke 20, 47). Just like sea monsters, they tear apart their young when they batten on the property of those subject to them, while neglecting their souls. Sometimes, however, if they have a moment to spare from plundering, they try to pour the milk of teaching into them, so as not to seem altogether to have abandoned their duties. The Lord, however, asserts that the teaching of such people is not to be rejected just because of their evil lives: The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. Whatsoever they shall say to you, do: but what they do, do ye not (Matt. 23, 2-3). In the moral sense, ‘the wisdom of the flesh is death’ to the soul.a This wisdom fails to give milk to its offspring when it feels disgust at the thought of advancing towards the good the virtues that are by God’s gift naturally inborn in the soul. Rather, it tears her to pieces betweenb different worldly desires, rarely if ever allowing her to receive nourishment with a view to the good. She may make great promises to herself, and measure out grand prospects in her mind; but ever she cleaves to the lowest, dwelling pleasurably in the desert of this world. So either like the ostrich she troubles not at all to bring her good thoughts into effect, or like the sea monster she rips them up apart between the inconstant delights of this world. Rightly, then, is such a daughter of the Christian people lamented by the prophet and called cruel. For it is the extreme of cruelty in a man to act savagely against his own soul, and by evil doing to inflict eternal punishment on her. Wherefore the wise man says: Son, have pity on thy own soul, pleasing God (Ecclus. 30, 24).

Cf. Rom. 8, 6. Cf. just below ‘per … delectationes dilacerat’, ‘rips apart between the delights’: the soul is distracted between different desires. a 

b 

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4, 4. The tongue of the sucking child hath stuck to the roof of his mouth for thirst; the little ones have asked for bread, and there was none to break it unto them. continues his complaint about the women’s appalling behaviour. Because they refused to give milk to their sucklings, the babes wasted away in a pitiful death, their tongues sticking to the roof of their mouths for thirst. Equally, rather older children requested bread, but were denied their request; their lives departed, and they saddened the neighbouring air. Allegorically, too, there is censure for the negligence of teachers who disdain to provide the food of their teachings to the ignorant or half-educated. For in holy church there are men of slender knowledge, content to skim the surface of the scriptures. But there are others who strive to enter into the great things within, and are capable of feeding on the more nutritious food of the utterances of God. Of people like this the apostle says: We speak wisdom among the perfect (1 Cor. 2, 6), while to others he says: I gave you milk to drink, not meat (1 Cor. 3, 2). For the Lord on the mountain, high on His mystic seat, instructs the apostles sublimely,a while, through the same disciples, He feeds the crowds in the valley, humbly, on bread.b And there are some as it were in the middle between the weak and the sublime, who do not creep along the ground but cannot by themselves rise to the understanding of higher things; they need a teacher to break the bread, that is to open up the marrow of the scriptures. For there are listeners who have passed above the lowest, yet are but little in comparison with the greater. In the moral sense, the soul has thoughts, neither very weak nor very strong, that strive with a natural energy towards the good. When she is sluggish with sloth or held captive by the pleasures of the world, she neither gives them to drink of the milk of straightforward ideas nor strengthens them with the food of spiritual teaching. For this she is quite properly lamented by the prophet. a  b 

Cf. Matt. 5, 1. Cf. e.g. Matt. 14, 19-21.

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Though she is making a start on the good, she disdains to finish the job; yet she knows that rewards are promised not to those who begin but to those who persevere.a Wherefore the soul is found guilty of a punishable offence. When she starts to do good, she surely knows that what she does is good. But when she stops, she is proved to be sinning not from ignorance of what sin is but because she is stubborn in sinning. 4, 5. They that were fed pleasurably have died in the streets; they that were brought up in scarlet have embraced the dung. You should apply these words to the Jews, both historically and allegorically. In the historical sense, because those who had previously been gourmets, reclining on expensive couches, now found themselves counselled by hunger to beg bread from door to door, and compelled by that same hunger to meet their deaths. Those who from their earliest years had been reared in scarlet, that is golden clothes (compare above: The noble sons of Sion, and they that were clothed with the first gold (Lam. 4, 2)), now, cast out of their homes, alive or dead, had to sleep beneath the sky and in the very mud of the streets. Allegorically, because before the Lord’s coming they fed pleasurably on the food of the scriptures and drank from the torrent of divine pleasure; but after He came they refused to follow Him who is the way that leadeth to life, and perished in the ways of the world that lead to punishment.b Those who previously imagined they shone with the brilliance of God’s utterances when they searched out the spiritual meaning of the law, now embrace dung, thinking carnal thoughts and loving whatever the letter prescribes. For when the law is understood spiritually in all respects, it lights up the heart of him who understands; but when it is in many respects fulfilled carnally, it befouls the heart and makes it ugly. Of this the apostle says: I have suffered the loss of all things, and counted them as dung, that I might gain Christ (Phil. 3, 8).

a  b 

Cf. Matt. 10, 22; 24, 13. Cf. Matt. 7, 13-14.

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The same allegory can be made to refer to masters teaching in the church who delight in their enjoyment of the precious food of God’s utterances. But if they scorn it because they are sluggish with a fatal sloth, they follow ways that are not good,a and walk through their pleasures.b For who could search out,c who list the byways, when one man turns aside into luxury, another into greed, a third in some other direction: but all or almost all diverging from the way of God. They perish in the ways of the world when they lose Christ, who testifies that He is the way and the life (John 14, 6). Hence they are also brought up in scarlet, when they are trained in the mysteries of the shining white bread that comes down from the heavens, saying with the psalmist: The Lord feeds me: and I shall want nothing. In a place of pasture, there He hath set me (Ps. 22, 1-2). Tired of this most sweet bread, and setting out on the bitter ways of the world, do they not seem to you to be embracing dung? For what is worldly show if not smoke and dung?— smoke because it disappears, dung because it rots. The beasts, it is written, have rotted in their dung (Joel 1, 17). On which the blessed Gregory comments: ‘Beasts rotting in dung stands for carnal men finishing their life amid the stink of luxury.’d A similar, moral meaning may be discerned in relation to the soul. She, too, often feeds delightfully on the choice food of God’s word, she, too, often dies in misery while treading the ways of the world. For her, ‘life’ means to follow in the footsteps of her Lord and Redeemer, who is the way and the life.e And she yields to death when she strays from the straight path and devotes herself to the pleasures of the earth. She is brought up in scarlet when she is trained in the brilliance of heavenly wisdom. Of this is said: Blessed is the man that findeth wisdom. The purchasing thereof is better than the merchandise of silver and gold (Prov. 3, 13-14), and The treasure to be desired resteth in the mouth of the wise (Prov. 21, 20 + 14, 33). But (one has to say it with sorrow) she embraces dung Cf. e.g. Ps. 35, 5. Cf. Ps. 80, 13 c  Cf. Job 36, 23. d  Gregory the Great, In evang. 10, 6. e  Cf. (again) John 14, 6. a 

b 

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when she longs for the earthly and broods on the perishable: all that, so far as the dignity of the soul is concerned, is filthy when it is actually in use, and fetid at the very end. 4, 6. And the iniquity of the daughter of my people is made greater than the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, and hands took nothing in her. The prophet explains why the Jews were overwhelmed by such evils: they had surpassed the deeds of wicked Sodom. That city’s depravities God quelled with a rain of fire, overwhelming it and its people in a split second. In agreement with this is Ezekiel’s statement that Sodom was justified in comparison with Jerusalem: Behold this was the iniquity of Sodom, pride and abundance and fulness of bread and idleness, and that to the needy and to the poor they did not put forth their hand.a Jeremiah seems here to allude to the last of these words, when he says: And hands took nothing in her. For the hands of the poor in Sodom received no alms to help them support life. All the same, the sins of Sodom were more excusable, for she was a stranger to the worship of God; the Jews, on the other hand, after they were given the law, after they had heard of the punishment of the Sodomites, and despite the constant protests of prophets, proceeded into all kinds of evil, and surpassed the barbarity of all men everywhere. For after killing prophets they committed sacrilege against the Lord himself, the prophets’ Lord. Hence in the Gospel He threatens that in the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that wicked generation.b Now to bring allegory and morality into play: there are many greater and more countless faults perpetrated by sinners in the church than those Ezekiel claimed there were in Sodom. For apart from pride, which is the beginning of all sin,c how few there are who take care not to fall into the rest, or rather do not positively glory in them! With us to have abundance and to be filled is a Cf. Ezek. 16, 48-49. Cf. Matt. 10, 15; 12, 45. c  Ecclus. 10, 15. a 

b 

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pursuit, to idle is a pastime; and to put forth the hand to the poor is rarely heard of. Well is it with us if we at least watched out for pride. That itself all too easily gains an entrance, if, as very often happens, the mind’s defences are on a loose rein; and this is the way the race starts in the direction of every vice. To write them all down individually would perhaps be impossible even for the most leisured; they are so beyond number that the intellect not merely labours but altogether fails in describing them. What is certain is that to sin in any way at all is to go against God’s commandments, and so to be proud. But why is earth and ashes proud?a In how short a moment is human glory overthrown, and all swelling of pride deflated! Of this is said in the book of Wisdom: The breath in our nostrils is smoke: and our spirit shall be poured abroad as soft air (Wisd. 2, 2-3). As for ‘and hands took nothing in her’, the explanation appears to me to be as follows. Sodom, and a soul following Sodom’s example, is overthrown in a moment because the hands of God­—of which Job says: Thy hands have made me, and fashioned me (Job 10, 8)—‘take’ nothing in a sinful soul that is worthy of His fashioning of her, or conducive to her salvation. Our Saviour puts this in a different way in the Gospel, when He says to the unbelieving: My word hath no placeb in you (John 8, 37). Alternatively, when the soul is overthrown, she finds nothing in her hands, that is in her behaviour, that she could properly present to God’s sight. The psalmist puts this differently: They have slept their sleep; and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands (Ps. 75, 6). 4, 7. Her Nazarites were whiter than snow, purer than milk, more ruddy than the old ivory, fairer than the sapphire. These things are said hyperbolically, an hyperbole being a phrase that goes beyond belief, very common both in pagan literature and in our own. For example, Vergil said of someone’s horses: ‘Which excelled the snows in whiteness, the breezes in running.’c Ecclus. 10, 9. The Latin is ‘non capit’, lit. ‘does not take’. c  Vergil, Aen. 12, 84. a 

b 

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So David on Jonathan and Saul: Swifter than eagles, stronger than lions (2 Kgs. 1, 23). This is the figure Jeremiah uses in speaking of the Nazarites of the synagogue, or rather the church. Her Nazarites were whiter than snow: snow falling from above signifies those seeking the contemplative life, tired of earthly things and aspiring after heavenly things. Purer than milk: milk taken from an earthly animal means those who run the journey of the active life with a perfectly spotless record. More ruddy than the old ivory: those who treat of physiology say that the elephant is a very chaste beast. Its bone is called ivory, which in its old age is suffused with a most lovely ruddiness. This means those who by God’s grace so excel in chastity that they blush not only to offend out of the weakness of the flesh, but even to abandon themselves to stray thoughts. Fairer than the sapphire. The sapphire is, of course, skyblue in colour. On this point the Holy Writ says: As the appearance of the sapphire stone, and as the heaven, when clear (Ezek. 1, 26 + Exod. 24, 10). So it stands for holy men dwelling on earth, but already anticipating the joys of heaven in their hopes. These men concentrate on the virtues of the contemplative and active lives, and gird their loins with modesty, not to serve the eyes of men, but to attain eternal joys. The order is beautiful,a because it is the first virtue of the Nazarites to desire the things of heaven, the last to attain them. Taken historically, this is artful eloquence, designed to arouse the judge’s angerb against the enemy and to intensify the complaint. says the Nazarites were snowy of skin and milk-white of hair, like ivory in the ruddiness of their cheeks and like sapphire in the serenity of their brows—all this to arraign the barbarity of the Chaldeans: no beauty, no time of life could soften them or prevent them attacking such pitiful victims with unbridled rage.

a  Snow comes first, symbolising aspiration to heavenly things; last comes sapphire, symbolising those who have (at least in hope) attained heaven. b  Jeremiah’s audience is here thought of as a judge trying the barbarous Chaldeans and being worked on by his rhetoric.

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4, 8. Hence what follows: Their face is made blacker than coals, and they are not known in the streets. Their skin hath stuck to their bones; it is withered, and is become like wood. We see what was hidden: we realise why praised the Nazarites so highly in his previous words. It was to arouse ill will against the enemy that he commended their beauty, so that he could go on to say to what a degree of ugliness they had been reduced. The faces of the young men, which formerly used to attract the eyes of beholders by the charm of their countenances, are now said to be ‘made blacker than coals’. If they had recognised them before, those who looked upon them now would not know them: they would look for them in vain even though they were before their eyes. Besides, the skin all over their bodies, once juicy and blooming, has now been so wasted away by hunger as to be dry as wood, scarce able to clothe the bones. You should regard these as hyperbolical statements, like the earlier ones.a Allegorically, there are many kinds of coals. There is the coal which one of the seraphim laid hold of with tongs and took from the altar to touch the lips of Isaiah with it, to free them for preaching.b There are ‘desolating’ coalsc (the four living creatures resemble them),d by which the hearts of the cold are set alight and by which vices are ‘desolated’ and consumed. But these are live coals. Those of which Jeremiah speaks are extinguished coals, signifying those who deceive the eyes of men by a pretence of sanctity, and try to lie even to God. For the moment, while they do good works with a ‘sapphirine’ motive, that is, in the hope of attaining reward in heaven,e they shine more beautifully than snow, more brightly than milk, more ruddily than the old ivory. Cf. IV, 7, 1 (IV, 351). Cf. Isa. 6, 6. c  Cf. Ps. 119, 4 ‘coals that lay waste’ (Douai). d  Cf. Ezek. 1, 5 and 13: ‘as for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like that of burning coals of fire’ (Douai). e  Cf. IV, 7, 2: ‘so [the sapphire] stands for holy men dwelling on earth, but already anticipating the joys of heaven in their hopes’ (and what follows). a 

b 

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But when, because they lust for praise from men, the splendour of virtues is dimmed in them, their souls are darkened before the eyes of God by the black filth of vices. As a result they are not even known in the streets, because although they are anxious to show off their deeds to men who wander down the broad ways of this world,a they are not recognised by them, for they intend one thing within while pretending another without. So their skin sticks to their bones, and becomes dry like wood: by skin is figured the fragility of the flesh, by bones the solidity of the virtues, by wood the roughness of their lack of feeling. For sometimes whatever good these men have passes over, through the habit of simulation, into hypocrisy; what had seemed firm and stable in them becomes vain and fragile. Then, too, as they grow less accustomed to the virtues, they become case-hardened in evil; losing the greenness of grace they wither in good. For there is no change with them, and they have not feared God (Ps. 54, 20). They become difficult to handle, and dry, for they have lost fear of the Lord. 4, 9. It was better with them that were slain by the sword than with them that died with hunger, for these pined away being consumed because of the barrenness of the earth. It is natural for a soul to shrink from being torn from the body by any kind of death whatever. But it is regarded as a lighter fate to escape torments by a swift stroke of the sword than to waste away in a long period of hunger. For it is preferable, and regarded as a blessing, to be freed by a quick demise than to be consumed gradually by a slow wasting. The man who dies can thank his death for his having being able to leave the woes of this life, but the starving man feels present need while having fears for the future. Hence what the prophet says after the manner of men: It was better with them that were slain by the sword than with them that died with hunger. Neither, of course, is good for the victim, either to be butchered with a sword or tortured by hunger; and of two evils one cannot be properly said to be better. But, as I said just now, it seems more tolerable to finish one’s life quickly with a stroke of a 

Cf. Matt. 7, 13.

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the sword than to fade away over a long time from starvation. But what follows, for these pined away being consumed because of the barrenness of the earth, conveys the meaning that during the time when the Chaldeans were besieging Jerusalem, to ensure that the disbelievers lacked no kind of misery, just as the air had denied rains, , with the result that a poor harvest deceived the hopes of the whole area. But in case I look as though I am making this up for myself, I shall call upon a credible witness, the blessed Jerome, who says in his third book on the same Jeremiah: ‘The word of the Lord came to Jeremias concerning the words of the drought:a one must suppose that during the siege rain did not fall, so that the besieged suffered a water shortage. The city makes use of a single fountain, that of Siloa, and even that does not flow all the time; even today failure of rain causes dearth not only of crops but also of drinking-water.’ b The allegorical and moral senses of these words are not at variance, but come together to form single way of understanding them. There are in Holy Writ swords of many types. There is the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God (Eph. 6, 17), more piercing than any two edged sword; and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, divider of the joints also and the marrow (Hebr. 4, 12). The Lord tells us to sell one’s coat to buy it, that is, to seek it at the expense of earthly substance.c This , by bringing life, mortifies the body to all vices, so that the soul may live eternally in the service of virtues. There is another which keeps away those who wish to enter paradised and which devours flesh:e this is the punishment exacted by the severity of God, which prevents the sinful soul from entering heaven, and sends her headlong down to hell. There is a third sword, in between those two, furbished and glittering.f To this is said: Return into thy sheath (Ezek. 21, 30). It brings agony to the body of a man for a time, to ensure Jer. 14, 1. Jerome, In Ier. 3, 26. c  Cf. Luke 22, 36. d  Cf. Gen. 3, 24. e  Cf. Deut. 32, 42. f  Cf. Ezek. 21, 28. a 

b 

334

3.

4.

IV, 9 (2.) – IV, 10 (1.)

1.

that the soul does not lose heaven. But in our passage we understand the sword of the word of God. Those who are slain with this do better than those who are killed with famine of it. Of this famine is written: I will send upon them not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of God (Amos 8, 11). This is the most damaging famine of all, for, as I have said elsewhere,a although there is an audience for the good, there is a shortage of men to speak it. In saying this about the barrenness of the earth, when teachers are more concerned with earthly cares than with God’s pastures. The seed of God’s word, cast into the hearts of men, becomes barren when hearers follow not the good teaching but the evil lives of their prelates. Hence they waste away, becoming cold towards the good, and are consumed as they warm to evil. 4, 10. The hands of the pitiful women have cooked their own children; they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people. Ancient writings, when carefully consulted, testify that women of Jewish stock have surpassed in cruelty all women everywhere on earth. You have only to read historical works to find that some men under siege have maintained life on the disgusting flesh of pack animals, but that nowhere did women make food of the bodies of their children. Wild animals love their young, and do not tear them apart whatever the necessity. But Jewish women, in the straits of hunger, did not think to spare even their own dear ones, or avoid sating their gluttony, or, perhaps, relieving their hunger, on the flesh of those they had brought forth from their wombs. When Samaria was under siege by an Assyrian army, a woman denounced a comrade, complaining that she had hidden her son in order to evade the terms of an agreement, after her own child had been consumed at dinner the day before.b That when Jerusalem was besieged by the Chaldeans married women did the same can be learned from the prophet’s words here, though it is true that

a  b 

Cf. I, 2, 12; I, 11, 5; II, 19, 4 (all from Gregory the Great). Cf. 4 Kgs. 6, 25-9.

335

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ON Lamentations

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we do not read of this anywhere else.a They may have been moved by pity towards their offspring,b but hunger drove them to madness. The same city, when invested by Titus, witnessed a similar outrage, as Josephus informs us; destruction and misfortune so pressed upon the daughters of that people that they did not abstain from eating even their nearest kin. Note that, as the prophet now mentions the fact for a second time, I have for a second time provided the same explanation.c Allegorically, as I said earlier too,d these women signify the teachers of the church, who can say, like the apostle, to those who hear them: My little children, of whom I am in labour again, until Christ be formed in you (Gal. 4, 19), and again: I gave you milk to drink, not meat (1 Cor. 3, 2). They are ‘pitiful’ when they offer their subjects the food of doctrine, but cruel if ever they ‘cook’ them, with the excessive severity that marks a pretence of justice. Such teachers make food of the children they should have fed when they either reprove them with indiscriminate severity or plunder their properties. The prophet Ezekiel thunders threats from God against pastors like these, who feed themselves, who take from the flock that which is fat, while rejecting what is weak and broken.e From this results a great destruction of the ‘daughters of my people’,f that is, the individual churches of Christ. Morally, the soul, accompanied by the grace of God, rears the tender offspring of virtues; but she often throttles them (or rather, as scripture puts it, cooks them) by her hypocrisy, acting as a stepmother not a mother. The who should have nourished eternal happiness and glory instead go to increase popularity among men and punishment that will endure. But a soul like this is rightly called ‘woman’ and ‘daughter’, for she lacks manly strength in good, and yields to the charms of womanly softness.

For a similar remark (about Paschasius) see V, 2-3, 1. An allusion to ‘pitiful’ in the lemma. c  Cf. II, 20, 3. d  IV, 4, 2. e  Cf. Ezek. 34, 2-4. f  populi was mistakenly omitted in the Latin text (after filiarum). a 

b 

336

2.

3.

IV, 10 (1.) – IV, 11 (2.)

1.

2.

4, 11. The Lord hath completed his wrath, he hath poured out his fierce anger; and he hath kindled a fire againsta Sion, and it hath devoured the foundations thereof. In the historical sense, God does not ‘complete’ His vengeance on sinners before they have themselves completed their iniquities. For example, as He says to Abraham, He came down to see if Sodom had completed its cry by action.b And in another place He says that the sins of the Amorites were not yet completed.c The Jews being guilty of every kind of sacrilege and unable to go further in iniquity, He in His turn poured out on them the full force of His anger, and completed the threats that He had till then kept in reserve out of His clemency. He did this both by the agency of the Babylonians, but particularly by that of the Romans, Titus and Hadrian. For under Nebuchadnezzar and Titus a devouring flamed consumed Jerusalem, but under Hadrian (as I said earlier) the old foundations were demolished and others laid; the city was given a new name, and the whole population expelled.e Quite right too! They had thrust away from themselves the foundation of the church, which is Christ Jesus;f justly then did they see the foundations of their city levelled and themselves uprooted from their homeland. Allegorically and morally, the Lord completes His wrath and pours out His indignation on a sinful soul which has never placed a limit on her outrageous behaviour, but has completed her iniquities and riotedg in luxury. God kindled a fire against her who should have been Sion, that is a look-out place of the virtues, but who had by her own vice deteriorated into an oven of sins. Of this ‘In Sion’ Douai. But note William’s in eam, ‘against her’, in the allegorical explanation below (§ 2). b  i.e. (see Gen. 18, 21): ‘in fact done what the reports of their behaviour had suggested.’ Cf. II, 8, 6. c  Cf. Gen. 15, 16. d  Cf. Judg. 20, 48. e  Cf. III, 64-66, 5 n. f  Cf. 1 Cor. 3, 11. g  expleret and effunderet pick up the wording of the lemma, but I have failed to find an appropriate translation for the latter. a 

337

ON Lamentations

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is said through the mouth of the prophet: They are all adulterers, their hearts are like an oven (Hos. 7, 4 and 6). This is the fire that struck the sheep of the blessed Job and consumed them and the servants,a not the fire that set alight the hearts of the apostles in the upper room.b So it comes about that the foundations of the soul’s virtues are altogether consumed by that fire, in order, that is, that the supports of the graces within her may be rased. Hence the reproach of mocking demons: Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof (Ps. 136, 7). 4, 12. The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, did not believe that the adversary and the enemy should enter in by the gates of Jerusalem. It is clear that not just nearby kings, but also quite distant ones, could not easily have been brought to believe that, whatever the force the enemy deployed, the great fortifications of the city of Jerusalem would be breached. The very situation of the place so mocked the threats of besiegers that on one occasion the Jebusites, laid under siege by David, are read to have boasted that they would see to their defence with the sole aid of the blind and the lame.c The city’s natural advantages were backed up by the talents and wealth of the kings who reigned in her over the years, especially Solomon; as a result the city was a source both of terror and of love to kings of other nations. With due respect to the dignity of the mystery,d I may be permitted to prove the point by quoting the psalm: With the joy of the whole earth is mount Sion founded (Ps. 47, 3). And following this: Behold the kings of the earth assembled themselves: they gathered together. So they saw, and they wondered, they were troubled, they were moved: trembling took hold of them, and the rest (Ps. 47, 5-7).

Cf. Job 1, 16. Cf. Acts 2, 2-4 (also 1, 13). This fire was identified with the Holy Spirit (see III, 52-54, 8). c  Cf. 2 Kgs. 5, 6. d  i.e. though I am fully aware there is a deeper meaning to the words. a 

b 

338

1.

IV, 11 (2.) – IV, 12 (4.)

2.

3.

4.

Allegorically, a double meaning can be elicited, one for the good, the other for the opposite.a Let me speak first of the good. The kings of the earth are the holy preachers of the church, especially the apostles, who could rule the land of their bodies honourably, knowing how, in the apostle’s words, to possess their vessel in sanctification and honour: not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles that know not God (I Thess. 4, 4-5). Now they are inhabitants of the land for which they had once longed, saying like the psalmist: I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living (Ps. 26, 13). Of this land the Lord too says: Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land (Matt. 5, 4). They fortified holy church, which is the spiritual Jerusalem, with such strong bulwarks of doctrine that she was thought to be impenetrable to incursions by demons. And though thanks to the spirit they foreknew and predicted that at the end of the world dangerous times were coming,b when men would depart from their faith, they did not believe that the enemy would weaken the very gates of the church, that is the teachers, so much indeed that men who were thought to be rulers of the church often initiated heresies. They imagined that the church had been lifted up from the gates of death,c so that the gates of hell should not prevail against her;d rather (as they thought) she would declare all the praises of the Lord in the gates of the daughter of Sion,e see (that is) in their life and behaviourf what she should preach. To come now to an exposition on moral lines of the other sense:g there are kings of another type, to be called tyrants rather than kings. Of these the apostle says: Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph. 6, 12). These are ‘inhabitants of the But the bad is discussed as the moral sense in the next paragraph. Cf. 2 Tim. 3, 1. c  Cf. Ps. 9, 15. d  Cf. Matt. 16, 18. e  Cf. Ps. 9, 15. f  That is, in that of the teachers, figured by the gates. g  See the beginning of § 2. a 

b 

339

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ON Lamentations

291

world’ because they have placed beds that pleased them in the hearts of men on the earth. Seeing the soul of a Christian by nature endowed with knowledge, but also fortified by the weapons of the catholic faith, they feel doubts, and do not believe that they can, for all their hostile din, break a way into the inner sanctuary of their thoughts,. Wherefore they search out soft and tentative ways of assailing them; they try to creep in gradually and as though with feigned flatteries. Soon, they win tyranny over the soul by means of pretence, having despaired of success if they showed their malevolence openly. 4, 13. For the sins of her prophets, and the iniquity of the priests, that have shed the blood of the just. It is easy to explain these words in such a way that the literal meaning is carried on thus: All the disasters I have mentioned came upon the Jews because their pseudo-prophets and priests ‘shed the blood of the just’ who were trying to recall them to the worship of God, and did not hesitate to accuse them if they were unsuccessful. The commons too went along with the crime of their superiors, subservient to their idolatry and corruption. It was only right that all were enveloped in one and the same downfall, for they had a share in the killing of holy men, the one group in deed, the other in intent. But to treat this more subtly, just as the departure of the soul causes the death of the body, so being deprived of God’s grace brings about the death of the soul. By this death prelates kill their subjects when many of them depart from justice, either because they get no good teaching from their masters, or because they see the bad examples they set. Thus, as in those days in the synagogue, so now in the church, there are some high up in the priesthood who butcher souls, because their counsel is followed as though it was the oracular word of a prophet; and from their hands, as being ‘overseers’,a is required the blood of the just, those that is who could have been just if they had had good teachers. Wherefore, because (in Isaiah’s words) there was no soundness in the Jewish people from the sole of the foot unto the top of the head (Isa. 1, 6), a 

speculatores: for Gk. episcopi, bishops.

340

1.

2.

IV, 12 (4.) – IV, 14 (3.)

1.

2.

3.

that is no soundness of faith or morals either in priests or in lesser people, a just and pitiable calamity overtook them all. Now too, since in the church people and priest are alike, God sometimes allows the Christian lower orders to be afflicted by many miseries, and even to be torn apart by frequent killings. 4, 14. They have wandered as blind men in the streets, they were defiled with blood; and when they could not enter, they held up their skirts. comes back to those who wasted away with hunger during the siege, so badly that their sight was impaired by shortage of food, and they ran into the bodies lying about everywhere in the streets, and were defiled with their blood. When they were forbidden entrance at the doors of the houses where they begged for alms, they wandered about in a pitiful plight, holding on to each other by the ‘skirts’ of their clothes. In the same way, allegorically, those who seemed to be teachers of the church often grow blind as they walk down the broad ways of this life,a led astray by worldly ambition or the errors of various heresies. They are defiled with blood because over them wash the crimes of those who perish as a result of the bad examples they set in teaching and behaviour. And they employ many kinds of subterfuge to contrive to hide their lives behind a veil of pretence, or to defend their teaching by disputation. Yet for all their craftiness, for all their eloquence, they can never enter the truth; they are rightly kept out, so evil are they. So they hold up their skirts, that is their unreliable and borrowed opinions, and in them is fulfilled the word of the Lord Saviour: They are blind, and leaders of the blind, and again: If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit (Matt. 15, 14). Morally, too, the soul, defiled by the foulness of her sins, strays along various winding paths of vice, and held by the complexb cares of the world cannot enter the sanctuary of God. For her own malice has blinded her.c Cf. Matt. 7, 13-14. The play on laciniae in the lemma is clear, but the proper meaning of the adjective here is uncertain. It is normally used of prolix writing (see VD 1, pr. 7 with n.). c  Cf. Wisd. 2, 21. a 

b 

341

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ON Lamentations

293

4, 15. Depart you that are defiled, depart, they cried out to them; Depart, get ye hence, touch not; for they abused ,a and were disturbed. They said among the Gentiles: He will no more dwell among them. continues to pile up the misery of the besieged, at whose offences against the worship of God even their enemies jeered. For when the Chaldeans had entered the shattered city, and saw the townsfolk fleeing to the temple, they shouted at them to depart and get them hence, and not touch the sanctuary, defiled as they were, for they had tainted it with their crimes. They were (the Chaldeans said) adding recklessness to sacrilege, if in their affliction they looked for help to their God, whom they had offended by their abominations in time of peace. Not content with shouts, they poured out the disturbance of their minds in abuse: it was right for the Jews to be deprived of the help of their God, for they had scorned His laws and trampled on His rites. This was the cry not only of the Chaldeans but of the other nations who had gathered for war: God (they said) would no more dwell among the Jews, who by their crimes had brought about the burning of the temple, the dwelling of God Himself. We shall give an allegorical application to these words thus. When the blind teachers, of whom I spoke above,b strive to establish their false conclusions by violent disputation, and are heard unwillingly or even abused, they tend to emit words on these lines: ‘Depart, wretches, from the scriptures that convey God’s thoughts; being defiled in your consciences, you are unable to touch them. For wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins (Wisd. 1, 4).’ They are sometimes also disturbed by anger and add abuse to their strictures, saying that hearers so impudent are not worthy that God should dwell among them; their manner of life is more gentile than Christian, for they are rebels against God’s word. a  ‘They quarrelled, and being removed …’ (Douai). But for the way William takes the words see below: ‘They poured out the disturbance’ (also ‘or even abused’ and ‘are … disturbed by anger and add abuse’). b  Cf. IV, 14, 2.

342

1.

2.

IV, 15 (1.) – IV, 16 (2.)

1.

2.

4, 16. The face of the Lord hath divided them, he will no more regard them. They respected not the faces of the priests, neither had they pity on the ancient. The Chaldeans are still speaking, in censure of the Jews’ sins. They had previously said: ‘He will no more dwell among them’; now they say: The face of the Lord (meaning His indignation) hath divided them, some to be killed, some to be made captive. He will no more regard them, so that having been obstinate in evil-doing they are held fast in woe. That the ‘face’ or ‘countenance’ of God signifies His indignation we can learn from: The countenance of the Lord is against them that do evil things: to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth (Ps. 33, 17). Observe the faith shown by Gentilesa in saying that the punishment of those who had sinned against Him is to be ascribed not to their own prowess but to the will of God. Thus Rabshakeh too said to the ambassadors of King Hezekiah that he had been told by the Lord to go up and destroy Jerusalem.b The next words, however, are spoken by the prophet, and are directed against the deeds of the Chaldeans. When they had shownc the Jews to be unworthy of God’s mercy, they slaughtered them with indiscriminate fury, feeling no shame in killing priests and no pity for the ancient, though the former deserved to be respected because of their rank, and the latter to be spared because of their age. Allegorically, God ‘divides’ false teachers, and does not regard them further if they do not repent. They are heretics, cast out from the bosom of the church, and divided even among themselves by the contradictions of their mad tenets. (This is obvious to one who reads church histories, and does not need proof from anything I may say.) Rightly , for they are not ashamed to impugn the true and apostolic doctrine ( not respecting the faces of the priests). Nor have they pity on the ancient: not only do they refuse to help souls hardened in the i.e. the Chaldeans. Cf. 4 Kgs. 18, 25. c  In vv. 15-16. a 

b 

343

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ON Lamentations

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sin of disbelief, to help them to pass into newness of life,a but they also strive to the utmost to prevent them taking off the old man with his deeds.b 4, 17. While we were yet standing, our eyes failed, expecting help for us in vain, when we looked attentively towards a nation that was not able to save us. The historical meaning of what is said here is quite clear. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, having removed and carried away Jehoiachin, put his uncle Zedekiah in his place.c When Zedekiah was able to ‘stand’ well under him and was not lesser among the neighbouring kings, he broke a sworn agreement,d relying in vain on the help of the king of the Egyptians.e But his eyesf and those of his nobles failed, and their intention was frustrated, for the Egyptian nation not only could not save them, but became involved in the same slavery and lost its freedom. Allegorically, the words are uttered by those who have previously been taken over and deceived by secular ambition, but in the end, late in the day, come to their senses, when struck by illness or warned by adversity. They therefore grieve that, at a time when they still seemed to be ‘standing’ in a good frame of mind, they put their hopes in such things as seemed attractive for the moment, but would soon pass away, though they did not realise it. And so there failed in them the eyes of human persipience and secular prudence: prudence that hoped in vain for the help of things that are agreeable but slip away like water. Scorning Him who alone can save, of whom it is truly said, My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth (Ps. 120, 2), they looked attentively towards the patronage of the rich; for it is written: Cursed is the man that trusteth in man, and his heart departeth from the Lord (Jer. 17, 5). But of course, as somebody said, anyone sought as

Cf. Rom. 6, 4. Cf. Col. 3, 9. c  Cf. 4 Kgs. 24, 15-17. d  By rebelling; cf. 4 Kgs. 24, 20 (also Jer. 52, 3). e  Cf. Isa. 36, 6 (above, I, 14, 3). f  Zedekiah is blinded in 4 Kgs. 25, 7. a 

b 

344

1.

2.

IV, 16 (2.) – IV, 18 (2.)

1.

2.

a patron in this life is himself in need of a patron,a for all alike are subject to death, all are in the same plight. The words may also be spoken by those complaining of having been deceived by heretics. Only when they fall back from heresy do they come to realise how vainly they had focused the eyes of their minds on help from those who were unable to save them or even themselves, how fruitlessly they had looked towards them. 4, 18. Our steps have slipped in the way of our streets, our end hath drawn near; our days are fulfilled, for our end is come. The miserable people is bewailing its misfortunes, when some, weakened by hunger, or losing their footing in the streets by tripping over rotting corpses,b slipped and fell. One could hear pitiful voices, first of people crying out that their end had drawn near, then, as they grew weaker, that their days were fulfilled and the end had already come. Allegorically, this verse repeats the previous one. Those who, coming to their senses after their sins, had said that they had put their hope in help that proved vain,c now say they had slipped in the tracks of their erring ways. Giving up their hope in Him of whom the apostle says The rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10, 4), and the psalmist He set my feet upon a rock, and directed my steps (Ps. 39, 3), they were plunged, as their actions deserved, into the pit of misery and the filth of mud. The way of this world, wide and broadd as it may seem to some when they are healthy and prosperous, proves to be muddy when these same people see that their end has drawn near or already come. So nothing in this world is long-lasting for those who fear. They cry that their end is now upon them, and find no way to flatter themselves that they will be forgiven.

Cf. Terence, Eun. 770. Cf. IV, 14, 1. c  Cf. v. 17. d  Cf. Matt. 7, 13. a 

b 

345

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ON Lamentations

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4, 19. Our persecutors were swifter than the eagles of the air; they pursued us upon the mountains, they lay in wait for us in the wilderness. The violence of the Chaldeans is hyperbolicallya compared to, and even said to surpass, the speed of eagles. Their strength, or rather their rapacity, is shown by their pulling down into the depthsb Jews who fled to rugged mountains; their cunning by the way that they searched out with clever malevolence others who hid in caverns deep in the earth as though in the bosom of the common mother of all. Mystically, by eagles are understood the holy teachers of the church, whose youth is renewed like the eagle’s,c when, every day, they put off the old age of malice and are renewed, as the apostle puts it, in the spirit of their mind.d Of these the Saviour says: Where the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together (Matt. 24, 28; Luke 17, 37). Where He is who is the body of the churche (for by Him catholic unity is joined together), there are gathered holy teachers, when those who in this world followed in His footsteps rejoice in His company in heaven. Such eagles contemplate things on high, when they are transported in mind to God.f But they also sometimes descend to earthly things, in their concern for those subject to them. But there are evil spirits, enemies of the church and also of each individual soul, swifter than the teachers; however carefully the masters keep watch, they cannot guard all their subjects from the enemies. In their fraudulent wickedness and natural sharpness they are quicker off the mark than a man, however careful he may be. So if Christians are in the mountains, that is at the peak of a church career or of secular honour, these most evil spirits never cease trying to dislodge them. If Christians hide in the wilderness of monasteries or even deserts, the spirits do not let them live a peaceful life there. And Cf. IV, 7, 1. I am not clear what this alludes to. But cf. I, 13, 2; V, 9, 1. c  Cf. Ps. 102, 5. d  Cf. Eph. 4, 22-23. e  Cf. Eph. 1, 23; Col. 1, 24. f  Cf. 2 Cor. 5, 13. a 

b 

346

1.

2.

3.

IV, 19 (1.) – IV, 20 (2.)

1.

2.

observe that they lie in wait not in mountains but in the wilderness, because laymen are sent headlong by the obvious evils of vice, but those devoted to religion the spirits try to mislead under a show of virtues. 4, 20. The breath of our mouth, Christ the Lord, is taken in our sins; to whom we said; Under thy shadow we shall live among the Gentiles. These words the Jews understand of Josiah. He is known to have been a most holy king, cut off by death not for his own sins but for those of his people. When the Jews hoped that they could breathe and stand firm because of his holiness, and that because of his strength they could not only defend their own possessions, but live without a care among the neighbouring Gentiles, as though under his shadow, Josiah escaped the general captivity by dying a premature death. All this is relevant to our understanding by what appalling behaviour the Jews offended God, for by their sins woes enveloped not just the common people and the unjust, but the nobles and the just also. The Lord, too, speaking through the prophetess Holda, promised as a great gift to Josiah while he yet lived, as a friend and familiar of His, that he would be taken in peace to the sepulchres of his fathers, and that his eyes would not see the evils to be brought upon the people.a But though some of these words can be made to fit pretty well with Josiah, it is absurd to say that he was the breath of their mouth: for they neither breathed nor spoke through him. But he was indeed ‘Christ’, that is anointed with the oil of kingship, and their ‘Lord’, not by common conditionb but by inheriting the kingship. Wherefore wiser heads refer these things to Lord Jesus, who is the breath of our mouth because that we breathe and speak is ruled by His pleasure. For we believe with the heart unto justice, and confess with the mouth unto salvation,c that He is in very truth God and man. In His human role, He is Christ, that is, He was anointed by God the Father with the oil of gladness above Cf. 4 Kgs. 22, 1-2 and 15-20; 2 Chr. 35, 22-24. Apparently meaning that Josiah was not just an ordinary (‘feudal’) lord but a king. c  Cf. Rom. 10, 10. a 

b 

347

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ON Lamentations

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His fellows;a in His divine role, He is Lord of all generations.b He was not only ‘taken’ but also suffered for our sins, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth (1 Pet. 2, 22). He stretched out His arms on the gallows of the Cross, to invite us to come to Him, so that we who came from the Gentiles might live under their protection, as under the shadow of His wings. That is why the psalmist says to Him: Protect me under the shadow of thy wings (Ps. 16, 8). He wanted to bring together the sons of Jerusalem too under the shadow of those wings, but in their obstinacy they shrank back. But He, who is the power of God the Father, did shade His own mother, guarding her from all the heat of vice with the parasol of His protection; for the archangel said to her: The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee (Luke 1, 35). In fact, by the shadow even of an apostle’s body thousands of the sick were cured in the streets.c So it is under the shadow of Christ’s Passion that we live among the Gentiles, for, as John Chrysostom says,d all the glory of God in this world and all the salvation of men consists in the Cross of Christ. Also, the body which He assumed from the Virgin overshadowed His divinity. We live in that shadow, if we take on His body worthily; but if we do not, we are deprived of life. As the Lord Himself says: He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, shall have everlasting life (John 6, 55). And again: Except you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life in you (John 6, 54). Or the meaning may be this: that Jeremiah the prophet, taking on the voice of Jews who will believe in the future, says that they will live in common with the believing Gentiles in the faith of Christ, from whom they now shrank away, thanks to their different rites and different food.e

Cf. Hebr. 1, 9. Cf. Ps. 144, 13. c  Cf. Acts 5, 15 (Peter). d  Cf. the in fact anonymous Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum (35). e  Or ‘manner of life’. a 

b 

348

3.

IV, 20 (2.) – IV, 21 (2.)

1.

2.

4, 21. Rejoice, and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Hus! To thee also shall the cup come; thou shalt be made drunk and naked. In the literal sense, these words connect with the previous ones like this: When Josiah, king of the Jews, that most holy and valiant man, was killed, all their hopes slipped backwards. Therefore it is ironically that the neighbouring nations, especially the Edomites, are told to rejoice when they see that their long-standing wishes have at long last been granted the outcome they had prayed for. Who would deny that the Jews were hated and feared by their neighbours? Pre-eminent among them for malice was Esau, also called Edom,a who was always a jealous rival of his brother Jacob; and he passed on his enmities as a heritage to his stock. (His great-great grandsonb was Uz, ancestor, as is well known, of the renowned and blessed Job.)c But the prophet’s words assert that the gloating of the Edomites would be turned back on their own heads, for after the destruction of Jerusalem they too were to be made naked of their country, and drunk on the cup of the Lord’s indignation. That the cup of the Lord signifies punishment in the present is intimated both here and elsewhere in the same prophet,d when he is told to give it to many nations due to be devastated by the Babylonian army, for them to drink of it. Similarly in the psalm: Fire and brimstone and storms of winds e the portion of their cup (Ps. 10, 7). That ‘cup’ threatens future vengeance too is attested by the psalmist elsewhere: In the hand of the Lord there is a cup of strong wine full of mixture. And he hath poured it out from this to that: but the dregs thereof are not emptied: all the sinners of the earth shall drink from it (Ps. 74, 9).

Cf. e.g. Gen. 25, 30. This genealogical precision may be unfounded. c  Cf. Job 1, 1. d  Cf. Jer. 25, 15 and 17. e  There is no verb in the Latin, and William seems to have forgotten that the context in the psalm shows that the reference is to the future, not the present. a 

b 

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Figuratively, though, the sense is the opposite. The believing Jews had said that they would live in common with the Gentiles who would believe in the future,a in the faith of the Passion and under the shadow of Christ. The wordsb are addressed to those same Gentiles, telling them to rejoice that the cup of the Lord will come to them too. ‘Edom’ is translated ‘earthly’ or ‘bloody’, ‘Uz’ ‘counsellor’. Both meanings are relevant to the Gentiles, for before the coming of Christ they were intent on earthly things and defiled by filthy contact with all kinds of sin. Of these is said: Blood hath touched blood (Hos. 4, 2). They dwelt ‘in the land of Hus’, because they were content to live a life of pleasure, led on by the allurements of the cunning counsellor.c On the other hand, our Lord is the ‘angel of great counsel’.d In the same way, both the Devil and Christ are, in different senses, called lions. Let then the Gentiles who have turned to the Lord rejoice, rejoice, I say, in their hearts, and delight also with a joyful cry. And the reason for joy is appended: the cup of the Lord has come to them, by which they are made drunk (that is, soothed and estranged from earthly concerns) and naked (that is, stripped of their sins by the faith of baptism). That we are washed in the death of Christ the apostle says: All we, who are baptized in Christ Jesus, are baptized in his death (Rom. 6, 3). The same apostle says in another place, speaking of baptism: In despoiling of the flesh of sin (Col. 2, 11).e Further, that the cup means our Lord’s Passion He Himself is a reliable witness. For He said to the disciples: Can you drink the cup that I shall drink? (Matt. 20, 22), and: The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? (John 18, 11). This cup came to the Gentiles, and made drunk the minds of the triumphant martyrs, who were thought by unbelievers to be out of their minds and stupid in allowing themselves for love of Him to be made naked not only of their property but of their lives also.

Cf. IV, 20, 3. i.e. those of the lemma. c  i.e. the Devil. d  Cf. Isa. 9, 6 (VL). e  Or ‘sin of (the) flesh’? a 

b 

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4, 22. Thy iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Sion, he will no more carry thee away into captivity. He will visit thy iniquity, O daughter of Edom; he will discover thy sins. The eloquent prophet follows up his laments beautifully and artfully, if we look to the historical sense. He had in the text as a whole, which consists of four alphabets, listed threats and complaints with regard to the sins of his fellow-citizens. Now in a single verse, the last, he tells them that they need have no worries at all. He asserts that their iniquity is accomplished, that is, forgiven, and that God will no more permit them to be carried away, at least by the Babylonians. In saying this, he prophesies that they will undoubtedly return to their homeland and enjoy abundant wealth as of old. And as it is no little comfort to the afflicted if their enemies pay the penalty for their insolent behaviour, he threatens that their foes will be visited by God for ill, with a downfall so obvious that all may see that they are suffering so sorely as the recompense for their sins. He specifies the Edomites, whose long-standing and persistent hatred could never be softened either by their being neighbours or by their close kinship.a The prophet therefore inspires his people with good hope for their future felicity, while consoling them meanwhile with the punishment of their enemies. For one faces danger with more fortitude if one knows it is shared by others. In the allegorical and moral senses, too, the laments reach an equally happy conclusion. The iniquity of the church universal and of every individual soul is said to have been accomplished, that is, wiped out—the iniquity at least of those who, placed here in a look-out point of good works, have, through many tribulations patiently borne, entered into the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, the kingdom of God. Hence the Lord will no more carry away into captivity those who are planted in the house of the Lord in the courts of our God (Ps. 91, 14). But those who are stained with the filth of earthly misdeeds He will ‘visit’ by punishing them for evermore, discovering their sins to them all, which they neglected a 

The precise meaning of ‘uernacula germanitas’ is uncertain.

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to confess here, hiding, in the words of the blessed Job, them like gold in their bosom.a Of which the apostle says: The Lord will come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the hidden things of the hearts (1 Cor. 4, 5). Thus the blessed Jeremiah, in the last verse of the fourth alphabet, promises to the good rewards that bring blessing, to the bad eternal punishments. This alphabet I have passed over cursorily, to avoid disgusting the reader by the repetition of similar sentiments in verbose periphrases. But so that this fourth book may correspond in length to the three that preceded it, I intend to finish off within it the prophet’s prayer, which, as we know, starts as follows. 5, 1. Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us; consider and behold our reproach. brings before the Creator’s eyes the captivity and misery of his nation. But the evils which come upon us [accidunt] are either the sins we commit or the tribulations we have to bear because of them; for they are not natural, but ‘accidental’.b And he begs God to remember this, so that He may both erase our misdeeds and mitigate our afflictions. He declares and deplores this by repeating two words meaning the same thing: Consider and behold our reproach. How great were the taunts of all the heathen nations, crowing over the Jews because a people which prided itself on being the only worshippers of the true God now found their city burned down and themselves turned out into exile from their native soil! It was also a reproach felt by the Jews themselves that they had degenerated from the virtues of their ancestors, and had so provoked God by their outrageous behaviour that they were reduced to being slaves to peoples inferior to them. Further, we hear the voice of the martyrs amid the oppression of the Gentiles, as in the psalm: How long, O Lord, wilt thou forget me unto the end? how long dost thou turn away thy face from me? (Ps. 12, 1), and Dost thou forget our want and our trouble? (Ps. 43, 24). For God appears to be forgetting when He delays a  b 

Cf. Job 23, 12. Gold is mentioned in another context in v. 10. accidentia. The language is taken from logic; see ODML s.v. accidere 4b.

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IV, 22 (2.) – V, 2-3 (2.)

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punishment. Hence the cry of the souls of the holy in Revelations: Why dost thou not defend our blood? (Rev. 6, 10). And again in the psalm: Revenge, O Lord, the blood of thy holy ones, which hath been shed (Ps. 78, 10). It was a reproach to them when they were asked every day, by people jeering at them, or pitying them when they saw them being (as they thought) afflicted without anyone paying a penalty: Where is thy God? (Ps. 41, 11). Hence elsewhere says: We are become a reproach to our neighbours: a scorn and derision to them that are round about us (Ps. 78, 4). 5, 2-3. Our inheritance is turned to aliens, our houses to strangers. We are become orphans without a father, our mothers are as widows. It is true that the Jews’ family properties in the vicinity passed into the control of depredators, and the houses inside or outside the city were taken over by new lords, on the death or flight of the lawful owners. So much for individuals. Taken as a whole, the people were deprived of the protection of a most loving father, God that is (in the scriptures the Jews are often found worthy of being called His children). I think that by ‘mothers’ are meant houses of prayer. Previously they used to attract respectablea congregations, but now they seemed to be ‘widowed’ because so few came there. But that there were synagogues on the Mount of Olives, as Paschasius says,b is not certain. It is up to him to vouch for this; I have read it nowhere else. Figuratively, the words are spoken by the martyrs, when they saw the fortunes of Christians plundered by persecutors, and their houses demolished from the foundations. They for the time resembled orphans, with no patron to protect them; for God, the father of all, was putting off the punishment of evil men, in order to give the good practice in patience. The ‘mothers’ of the martyrs were individual churches in different places, which were now ‘widowed’ because by a single edict from the bloody persecutor a  William seems to echo a phrase of Orosius (Hist. 7, 12, 3), where the sense is ‘well-behaved’, ‘harmless’. But the context suggests something like Eng. ‘decent’, i.e. in number. b  Paschasius 3, 156-8 (in fact from Verecundus, though William, it seems, does not know this).

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Diocletian all buildings used for prayer were rased to the ground on a single day throughout the world. But they were not really widows, but ‘as widows’, for soon God came to relent and the barbarity of the persecution was stilled: as quickly as they had been overthrown by Diocletian, the churches were most splendidly rebuilt by Constantine.a These words are also the lament of the church over the wickedness of heretics, who by the perversity of their doctrines rip up the sacred utterances. For Holy Writ is the inheritance of holy men, training and advancing them, so that they may possess a house not made with hands, eternal in heaven (2 Cor. 5, 1). Heretics, by twisting this inheritance to give a wrong meaning, claim it for their own purposes in this world, and also have the presumption to hope that they are reserving for themselves in the future a dwelling place in the heavenly house. Then all simple folk, incapable of standing up to them, are like orphans: their teachers keep silent, for they are dumb dogs not able to bark (Isa. 56, 10). The ‘mothers’, too, of the faithful people, the individual churches (as I said) in various places, look to be ‘as widows’ when they cannot bring to birth sons of God because of the uproar caused by heretics. But when the eye of God beholds them in serenity, their widowhood is made fertile, so that they have teachers as ‘husbands’ and give birth to catholic peoples of God as their ‘sons’. 5, 4. We have drunk our water for money; we have bought our wood for a price. This portrays the unspeakable miserliness of the enemy, who put up water for sale, the element that is there for the common use of all mankind, and charged even for wood, the very things the captives needed to allay their thirst and cook their food. Allegorically, alludes to bishops who are not afraid to sell the water of spiritual grace for a price. Of these waters,b the Lord said: He that believeth in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Now this (the evangelist says) he said of a  Diocletian’s destruction of the churches: Rufinus, Hist. 8, 2, 4; Constantine’s edict on rebuilding: 8, 17. b  The plural comes in rather awkwardly. Perhaps ‘of these grants of water’? Cf. aquas spiritales below.

354

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V, 2-3 (2.) – V, 5 (1.)

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the Spirit which they should receive, who believed in him (John 7, 38-39). And also: If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink (John 7, 37). And equally to the Samaritan woman: He that shall drink of the water that I will give him, there shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting (John 4, 1314).a This grace of spiritual anointings, that is the holy orders,b subjects grieve that they cannot obtain from priests except for money, though Isaiah says: All you that thirst, come to the waters: and you that have no money make haste, buy, and eat (Isa. 55, 1). So the prophet is inviting the faithful to drink at no cost the spiritual waters of which I spoke, and at no cost to eat the bread of teachings. Yet some priests of our day provide wood (that is, the kindling for teachings, to feed the fire of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men) only at a price, when they are either softened by the attentions of their subjects or won over by empty flatteries in praise of their eloquence. In the moral sense, a man drinks water for money if, despising riches and the delights of the world, he comes through mighty labours of continence to the tears of compunction. Of this is said in the psalm: Thou wilt feed us with the bread of tears (Ps. 79, 6). Also, he buys wood to feed the fire of God’s love when he rejects earthly things and buys spiritual things in exchange. 5, 5. We were dragged by the necks, we were weary and no rest was given us. This was another indication of the barbarians’ cruelty, that they made their captives travel faster by driving them on with pikes or stakes, and granted no rest to those they struck. In the mystic sense, the church is bewailing the oppression suffered by martyrs. Their persecutors punched them and tied ropes round their necks, forcing them to continue their flight from city to city. Even those who appeared more gentle grudged them any halt as they made them flee from one place to another.

It is possible that the quotation has been shortened by scribal negligence. The allusion is presumably to priests demanding money for baptising; cf. VW 1, 7, 1 with n. But sacros ordines, rather than sacramenta, is strange. a 

b 

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Morally, we understand by ‘neck’ the puffing up of the mind. Hence the psalmist says: The Lord breaks the necks of sinners (Ps. 128, 4). For the ‘stiff-neckedness’ of our minds is broken for our own good when, struck by fear of God, we have no high thoughts, but tremble in awareness of our misdeeds. With them in mind, we let no rest enter into us, but constantly weep always, groan always. 5, 6. We have given our hand to Egypt, and to the Assyrians, that we might be satisfied with bread. It is well known that the patriarch Jacob tooa moved to Egypt because of the shortage of food that oppressed him and his; and that, in the end,b the Jews vainly placed their hopes in the strength of the Egyptians, while some, during the earlier captivity, begged alms daily from the Assyrians. This was felt as a great disgrace for men of such distinguished stock: once, they had been used to supporting others out of their resources, but now they were reduced to the extreme strait of begging for a living. In a deeper sense, the church laments that those set over her as overseersc ‘give their hands’ for the acquisition of earthly wealth: that is, they subject themselves to the powerful of this world, who are correctly indicated by ‘Egypt’ and ‘Assyrians’. For ‘Egypt’ means ‘darkness’, ‘Assyrians’ ‘people directing’. When the powerful of the world direct themselves to everything secular and concentrate on that, they grow too dark to contemplate the light above. So it comes about that when priests kowtow to such men in their pursuit of honours, they become wrapped in the same darkness as they. 5, 7. Our fathers have sinned, and are not; but we have borne their iniquities. It is clear that the fathers of Jews contemporary with Jeremiah disregarded the tenets of the Law by taking part in idolatrous rites under the wicked kings Ahaz and Manasseh. Their sons, following in their fathers’ footsteps by perpetrating even greater iniquities, had to confront all that God’s anger had long threatened. a  Loosely put. Jacob went hungry, like the Jews suffering from the Chaldeans. But see CC CM, p. 329. b  An odd phrase. c  Bishops (IV, 13, 2 n.).

356

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V, 5 (2.) – V, 8 (1.)

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The Jews also sinned when their wicked cries egged Pilate on to put our Lord to death, but also by binding their posterity with a cruel wish: His blood be upon us and upon our children (Matt. 27, 25). Their children too, piling their persecution of apostles upon the sacrilege of the Lord’s Passion, were after 42 years conquered by Titus; then, after another fifty, they were altogether driven out by Hadrian.a Figuratively, these words may be referred to the original sin that infected our first parents, who handed on the stain in turn to their posterity; for though we have lost the sin of the soul by being baptized, we have not escaped bodily death. The words are also spoken by those who are misled by heretics but come to their senses. Those (they say) whom we thought to be our fathers sinned; they deceived us, for within they are not such as they show themselves to men without. And we, nonetheless, not understanding their craftiness, carried the burden of perverse teachings. 5, 8. Servants have ruled over us; there was none to redeem us out of their hand. It is well known that Noah, offended by the wickedness of his son Ham, reduced his posterity to the status of slaves. Hence he says of Ham’s son: Cursed be Chanaan, a servant shall he be of his brethren (Gen. 9, 25). The prophet therefore laments on behalf of his people, that at the very beginning of their race, the Jews, who came from a distinguished and noble line of patriarchs, had to obey slaves, when the Egyptians, who were clearly descended from Canaan, were their lords. As for the Chaldeans, they were descended from Shem, though they fell away from his nobility into servile ways by leaving the true God whom he had worshipped most scrupulously, and serving idols. Now they too were subjecting a well-born nation to oppressive slavery. Nor was there anyone ‘to redeem’. For each and every nation preferred to look to its

If William had in mind the generally accepted AD dates for these events (for which see further III, 64-66, 5 and IV, 11, 1), they occurred in 70 and 120. The Passion would then fall in 38. a 

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own defence against the Chaldeans’ assault rather than to help the Jews at this critical moment. In the mystic sense, the church laments that the evil spirits, who lost their liberty by proud rebellion against their Author, dare to tyrannise over souls redeemed by Christ’s blood. Or else inferior persons in the church, seeing their prelates enslaved to sin, complain (as we know) that they are subject to the judgement of those who are not ashamed to be the servants of dire misdeeds. For whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin (John 8, 34). And there is no one to redeem us from the domination either of spiritual enemies or of carnal prelates unless our Saviour, who is true liberty, stretches out His hand to our soul; for He redeemed us even by His blood. 5, 9. We fetched our bread at the peril of our souls, from the face of the sword in the desert. This too is clear enough, that the fleeing Jews hid themselves even in desert caves, and thither, at the peril of their souls, that is, fearing they might be cut off by the enemy, carried food to revive them. Allegory strongly resists this way of understanding the words. Its lesson is that happy is the soul that hides herself from the tumults of this life, if possible in the body, if not, at least in the mind. Placed in solitude like this, so welcome to God, she continually chews over the bread of the holy scriptures, in order to make it pass into herself for the nourishment of her virtues. But she hides it ‘from the face of the sword’, holding up the shield of faitha against the temptations of the Devil, and hiding her good qualities from flatterers, who by their empty compliments exaggerate everything and cut down the living virtues as if with a sword. 5, 10. Our skin was burnt as an oven, from the face of the storms of the famine. goes on stressing the severity of the famine, under the stress of which the skin must first grow pale, then wrinkle and go black. And everyone knows that constant great heat darkens a man’s skin. a 

Cf. Eph. 6, 16.

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V, 8 (1.) – V, 11-14 (2.)

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2.

A more subtle understanding goes like this. God made our first parents wear garments of skinsa when He turned them out of paradise, by the skins of dead animals signifying the future mortality of men. To pay for their sin, we have all incurred this skin, which the Devil, provoker and furnace of vices, sets on fire with daily burnings of desire. But this came about for us because of the storm of hunger for the word of God; for there is no doubt that if, to our pleasure and benefit, we refreshed ourselves with the banquet of the scriptures, the dew of the Holy Spirit would cool us when we are faced with the oven of the Devil. 5, 11-14. They brought low the women in Sion, and the virgins in the cities of Juda. The princes were hanged up by their hand; they did not respect the personsb of the ancient. They abused the young men indecently, and the children fell under the wood. The ancients have ceased from the gates, and the young men from the choir of the singers. It is superfluous to expound these things historically,c especially as there is no obscurity in the literal sense. says quite plainly that Jews of both sexes and every age and rank were either killed or made mock of by the Chaldeans; that married women and virgins were exposed to the lusts of the victors; that noblemen were hung on gibbets by their own hand or that of the enemy; that old men were held in no respect and youths disgracefully raped; that boys were tied to branches of trees pulled right down, and dashed on the ground when the branches soon went back up again with the force given them by nature. So ended the judgements of the elders that used in the old manner to be held at the gate,d so fell silent the songs of young men throughout the city. But all of this comes together under one allegoricale meaning. Spiritual wickednesses, by the agency of the Chaldeans (translatCf. Gen. 3, 21. So Douai; lit. ‘faces’. c  B has allegorice. There is a problem in this section about the identification of the three levels of meaning (see apparatus criticus to Latin text). d  Cf. III, 61-63, 4. e  Yet the paragraph mingles allegorical, moral and even historical explanation. a 

b 

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ed ‘making captive’), take away the virginity of the soul (which the apostlea espoused to one husband, as a chaste virgin to Christ), by corrupting her with temptations, and bring low by foul vices her who had before been raised high by virtues. For out of a virgin they make her a woman, because with a woman’s fickleness she easily turns aside into evil. And this ‘in Sion and in the cities of Juda’, for men of the correct confession (‘Juda’ means ‘confession’), and even those in a position to contemplate (‘Sion’ is translated ‘look-out place’), are taken captive by demons. Also, princes of the church, if you want to take it literally, were hung up by unbelievers, the most excellent and blessed brothers Peter and Andrew, and the most holy Simeon son of Cleophas, patriarch of Jerusalem, cousin of the Lord, and many others whom fame hides from us in darkness.b If you take it in a deeper sense, the teachers and notables of the church are, by the plots of enemies who make them captive, ‘hung up’ on things other than what the dignity of their calling demands, bound too by the chains of what allures them. As a result, those who should have behaved with an old man’s maturity have no honour paid them by their subjects, who make light of their words because they shudder at their actions. Or else they do not ‘respect the persons of the ancient’ in that they do evil shamelessly in their presence, well aware that they do just the same. Also, the enemies of the soul ‘abuse the young men indecently’ when by persistent assaults they cause to slip and fall men of an age when the natural promptings of the flesh trip them up. All the unbelieving Jews too ‘fell under the wood’ when, children in sense but grown-up in malice,c they refused to believe that it was Christ our God hanging there on the wood. For those who fall by the wood into death are those who find a stumbling block in Christ because of the gallows of the Cross.d The apostle says the opposite: God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal. 6, 14). There are besides in the church children 2 Cor. 11, 2. Cf. Vergil, Aen. 5, 302. c  Cf. 1 Cor. 14, 20, quoted at I, 5, 6. d  Cf. 1 Cor. 1, 23. a 

b 

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a hundred years olda who are accursed as they die for their iniquities, because they have not crucified their flesh, with the vices and concupiscences (Gal. 5, 24). Old men too, mature in action and wise in counsel, ‘cease from the gates’ when they turn up their noses at good and grow used to sin; of them is said: Open ye to me the gates of justice (Ps. 117, 19). Young men ‘cease from the choir of the singers’ when, though once strong in good, they grow weak; alienated from the choir of the holy, they forget the spiritual song of the Lord because of their worldly concerns. 5, 15-16. The joy of our heart is ceased, our dancing is turned into mourning. The crown of our head is fallen; woe to us, because we have sinned. After the description of all ranks separately, returns to the city as a whole. For there was a general period of mourning, and the public joy had ceased. Songs in praise of God could not be heard by rejoicing hearts in a place where the grudges left behind by civilb slaughter were still freshly warm, where too the crown of king and bishop had been cast down. Yet they cry that these things had befallen them deservedly, for they had provoked God by their sins. Allegorically, the words are spoken by the penitent offering a contrite and humbled heart (Ps. 50, 19) to God, and, in the absence of the Bridegroom for the time, turning all transitory joy into fruitful grief. ‘Dancing is turned into mourning’ when the eyes and hearts of the penitent, in consonance with the sins they had committed, are joined in a harmony of grieving and maintain a united song of repentance, so that after grief and lament the same dancing may return to joy. The crown of the church is Christ Himself; hence it is said: The Lord of hosts shall be a crown of glory (Isa. 28, 5). The crown of the church in Christ is therefore the catholic faith. The church loses this crown when some of her members differ from the pure faith. If the crown falls, woe is pro-

Cf. Isa. 65, 20. So it says; nor were there bishops in Jerusalem at this time. It would seem that William is here, less covertly than usual, thinking of his own country and times. a 

b 

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claimed to sinners because, when teachers lose their way in the faith, ordinary people run into danger. Morally, ‘the crown of our head’ is God’s good will towards us, in accordance with the words: Lord, thou hast crowned us with a shield of thy good will (Ps. 5, 13). For so long as we are protected by God’s good will, we are crowned with a glorious diadem of honour and glory. But when for our deserts we are deprived of it, woe to us, because we have sinned. For His good will would not depart from us if our misdeeds were not piling up. 5, 17-18. Therefore is our heart sorrowful, therefore are our eyes become dim; for mount Sion, because it is destroyed, foxes have walked upon it. The prophet says that the eyes of the captives were blinded by the degree of their grief when they saw Mount Sion, once the dwelling of patriarchs and prophets, turned into a lair for foxes. By ‘foxes’ you should understand the Chaldeans and Romans, who, by fraud rather than force, brought so many nations under their sway. Hence of the same Jews we read in the Psalms, as I have said elsewhere:a They shall go into the lower parts of the earth: they shall be delivered into the hands of the sword, they shall be the portions of foxes (Ps. 62, 10-11). For they were driven by the Romans from the higher districts to lower ones; some were put to the sword, some split up to become slaves of different masters. Figuratively, salutary is the pain of compunction, which wounds the hearts of the overseers of the church and fills their eyes with tears, as they remember the pity with which our Lord and Saviour abased himself to exalt us. For He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross (Phil. 2, 8). He Himself is Mount Sion, judging by whose conduct as a man we can watchb to see which way we ought to travel. He Himself is the mountain of the house of the Lord (Isa. 2, 2) (that is, the church), exalted above the top of mountains (that is, higher than the virtues of all the holy). He seemed to have been ‘destroyed’ when He

a  b 

Cf. III, 43-45, 4. Cf. the meaning of Sion (I, 4, 2).

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V, 15-16 (2.) – V, 20 (1.)

1.

1.

emptied His divinity,a made a little less than the angels.b Upon Him foxes walk when heretics or heathen rip up His teachings. By ‘foxes’ are signified those who are entirely alien from Him, as He says of Herod: Go and tell that fox (Luke 13, 32); heretics, as in the Song of Songs: Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vines (S. of S. 2, 15). Holy teachers are therefore right to declare the grief of their sad heart, their tears flooding so abundantly that their eyes grow dim when they see faithless and wicked men find a stumbling block in the humility of Christ, which should have made them rather love and embrace Him. 5, 19. But thou, O Lord, shalt remain for ever, and thy throne from generation to generation. As though he were saying: ‘Unbelievers thought that your divinity did not exist, or that, if it had existed, it had been destroyed when you emptied yourself, taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2, 7); but you remain for ever. David too says this: But thou, O Lord, endurest for ever (Ps. 101, 13). Again: But thou art the selfsame (Hebr. 1, 12). For even Humility in person received the power of judgement, and will never experience an end. This is the point of what follows too: And thy throne from generation to generation. So also David: Thy seat, O God, is for ever and ever (Ps. 44, 7), and: Thy kingdom is a kingdom of all ages (Ps. 144, 13). When you hear the word ‘throne’, understand by it ‘judge’, and feel afraid. For although the Son qua man underwent judgement, His kingdom remains for ever. 5, 20. Why then dostc thou forget us for ever, forsaking us for a long time? Since, though you seemed to have been humiliated in the flesh, you were always God, and exalted us by your humiliation, why do you appear to forget those whom you redeemed, by laying them open to temptations? Similarly in the psalm: How long, O Lord, dost thou forget me unto the end? how long dost thou turn away thy face from me? (Ps. 12, 1). Again: Why turnest thou thy face away? Cf. Phil. 2, 7. Cf. Ps. 8, 6. c  For the present (rather than the future used in the Douai translation) cf. below obliuisci uideris. The same ambiguity recurs in Ps. 12, 1, cited below. a 

b 

363

314

ON Lamentations

315

and forgettest our want and our trouble? (Ps. 43, 24). As I have often said,a He appears to forget when He delays comfort in order to kindle longing. Let us therefore be mindful of Him lest He forget us, because of a truth, unless we turn a stubborn back on His precepts, He will not turn away His merciful eye from helping us. 5, 21. Convert us, O Lord, to thee, and we shall be converted; renew our days, as from the beginning. Hence the psalmist says: Convert us, O God our saviour (Ps. 84, 5). If God converts us by grace, we are converted to Him by the free exercise of our will. For grace goes before, and our will follows behind, helped by God. It is we who slip, God who raises us . We are called to return to the beginning of the dignity of our original making when we are converted to God, but when we reach it we shall be renewed. 5, 22. But thou hast utterly driven us out and rejected us, thou art exceedingly angry against us. In this final verse, the most holy prophet, concluding his prayer, intimates the temporal penalties of the holy and the eternal laments of the wicked. It is as though he were saying: ‘You do not, as I ask, wish to renew us as from the beginning; you seem rather to be driving out and rejecting holy men in this world, when temporal affliction presses upon them and the help of your hand ceases, until the right moment comes. But against the wicked you are angry exceedingly, that is, eternally.’ The blessed prophet is speaking on behalf of the human race: he says that with the elect he is being rejected temporally; but, out of the love that would make him hope all men to be saved, he reckons that he is being tormented along with the damned.b Further, God has ‘rejected’ us when we assent in our minds to temptations and yield to them in deed. But Cf. III, 22-24, 4 and 5. I am very grateful to Dr Sønnesyn for elucidating this compressed passage. The prophet puts himself in the position of the human race as a whole. Speaking as one of the elect, he says he is ‘driven out’ in this world (though, it is implied, he will be rewarded in the next). Speaking as one of the damned, he reckons that he is sharing their torment while living (because a bad conscience anticipates the penalties that will follow death: cf. I, 2, 14). He can empathise with the damned in this way because of the affection that fills his heart; and as a result of that same affection he would wish all men to be saved, the damned as well as the elect. a 

b 

364

1.

1.

V, 20 (1.) – V, 22 (3.)

2.

3.

He is exceedingly angry when we persist in sin. He is angry as a father, when He reproaches the wrongdoer and makes him penitent. He is angry as the Lord, when He punishes in this world. He will be angry as a judge, when He shall say: Go, you cursed, into everlasting fire (Matt. 25, 41). So that there we may deserve to escape this sentence, one to be dreaded in this world and the next alike, let the wicked man here forsake his ways, and return to the Lord his God, for He is gracious and merciful, and ready to repent of the evil (Joel 2, 13). ‘But there is no reason’, as the most excellent pope Leo saysa (for I shall quote a little from him here, so that this great craftsman may place the coping stone of his golden eloquence upon my rustic work), ‘there is no reason why we should seek excuses for ourselves in the difficulty of God’s precepts. For to pious children and good servants the labour of serving God is not only not harsh or burdensome, but even sweet and light. As the Lord says: Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take up then my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart. For my yoke is sweet and my burden light (Matt. 11, 28-30). Nothing, then’ (Leo goes on) ‘beloved , is hard to the humble, nothing harsh to the meek, and all precepts are easily put into practice when grace proffers aid and obedience softens the harshness of the command. For every day the utterances of God thunder in our ears, and every man cannot help butb know what is pleasing to divine justice. But since the last judgement is put off by the forbearance and graciousness of the Judge, the hearts of the faithless promise themselves impunity for their wickedness. They imagine that to discriminate between human actions is irrelevant to God’s view of them, as if bad deeds are not very often punished by the plainest possible judgements, or as if the terror of threats from heaven does not often manifest itself, reminding us of the faith and rebuking faithlessness. But amidst all this there remains over all men the graciousness of God; a  Leo the Great, Tract. 35, 3-4. William starts by paraphrasing the pope’s words, then cites him verbatim. b  This seems to be the sense, though conuincitur is an odd way of putting it.

365

316

ON Lamentations

He denies His mercy to no one, indiscriminately granting many good things to all men, and attracting by favours those whom He might reasonably subject to His penalties. For delay in punishment leaves room for repentance.’ Let therefore human obedience not withdraw itself from God’s grace, or fail from that good without which it cannot be good; or, if it finds anything impossible or difficult in the carrying out of orders, let it not remain within itself, but return to Him who gives the order, for He commands just in order to excite longing; and may Jesus Christ our Lord give His help. THE END OF THE BOOK OF WILLIAM MONK OF MELDUNUM ON THE EXPLANATION OF THE LAMENTATIONS OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH

366

4.

Indices

Index of Biblical References

The biblical passages indexed here are those, and only those, appearing in italics in the main body of the translation. CC CM 244, pp. 337-364 may be consulted for passages mentioned in the footnotes. Genesis (Gen.) 1, 26 2, 17 9, 25 27, 37 49, 18

320 269 357 210 271

Exodus (Exod.) 24, 10 32, 34

331 218

Leviticus (Lev.) 19, 2

194

Numbers (Num.) 14, 20 24, 5-6

218 210

Deuteronomy (Deut.) 32, 21 32, 22 32, 25 34, 7

109 117 109 265

Judges (Judg.) 2, 22 3, 4

142 142

1 Kings (1 Kgs.) 2, 10 2, 25

180 82

2 Kings (2 Kgs.) 1, 23 6, 22 7, 13-15 16, 10

331 281-282 69 123, 282

3 Kings (3 Kgs.) 8, 46

84

4 Kings (4 Kgs.) 10, 29

84

Job

369

1, 21 4, 18

123 131

Index of Biblical References

7, 1 9, 13 10, 8 10, 20-22 14, 4-5 15, 15 25, 6 40, 18 41, 25 42, 6 Psalms (Ps.) 1, 1 1, 3-4 4, 2 4, 7 5, 13 6, 3-4 6, 7 6, 8 7, 13 7, 13-14 8, 1 8, 3 9, 10 9, 11 9, 19 9, 22 9, 24 = 10, 3 Hebr. 10, 1 Hebr. 10, 7 11, 3 11, 7 11, 9 12, 1 13, 1 15, 6 15, 10 16, 8 16, 15 18, 5 21, 2 21, 8-9 21, 14 21, 15 22, 1-2

22, 6 23, 1 23, 8 24, 6 26, 13 27, 4-5 30, 2 30, 9 31, 3 31, 5 31, 9 32, 18-19 33, 14-15 33, 16 33, 16-17 33, 17 33, 20 36, 3 37, 3 37, 5 37, 7-8 39, 3 39, 15 40, 5 40, 6 41, 4 41, 9 41, 11 41, 12 43, 20 43, 24 43, 25 44, 3 44, 6 44, 7 44, 10 45, 5 47, 3 47, 4 47, 5-7 48, 13 = 21 50, 7 50, 12 50, 13 50, 14 50, 19

44, 158 193, 284 330 164 84 131 93 218 254 266 39, 202 175 170, 248 42 362 118 52 244 185 72 130 130 264 266 264 264 152 135 349 310 74 104 352, 363 178 119 238 348 162 74 236 216 296 156 77, 291, 328

370

77 176 77 272 174, 294, 339 313 266 249 203, 244 141 130 225 219 91 219 343 129 275 260 125, 249 239 345 168, 276 106 295 264, 287 48 353 228 292 352, 363-364 280 47, 178 257 363 178 221 338 188 338 63, 159 84 136 136 136 106, 222, 361

Index of Biblical References

52, 1 54, 13-15 54, 16 54, 20 56, 5 56, 7 58, 11 58, 12 58, 15 59, 3 59, 5-6 61, 12-13 62, 10-11 68, 13 68, 15 68, 27 68, 28 68, 28-29 68, 29 68, 33 70, 1 70, 5 72, 2-3 72, 5-6 72, 9 72, 11-12 72, 18 72, 21 73, 4 73, 5-6 73, 6 73, 22-23 74, 9 75, 6 76, 3 77, 25 78, 1 78, 4 78, 10 79, 2 79, 6 79, 9 79, 12 79, 14 80, 11 81, 6

81, 6-7 83, 3 83, 4 83, 5 84, 5 85, 2 86, 1-2 86, 3 87, 5-6 87, 16 88, 31-34 88, 33-34 88, 39 89, 6 89, 10 91, 14 97, 2 97, 3 101, 8 101, 10 101, 13 102, 1 and 5 104, 3-4 108, 2 108, 4 108, 18 109, 7 114, 9 117, 19 117, 27 118 118, 45 118, 57 118, 61 118, 65 118, 81 118, 82 118, 87 118, 120 118, 136 119, 4 120, 1-2 120, 2 122, 1-3 122, 3 126, 4

178 302-303 303 333 311 284 77 123, 293 104 72 72, 184, 256 109 293, 362 310 201 311 44, 70, 292 143-144 168 276 266 266 206 240 93, 281 288 93, 288 288 101 101 101 100-101 349 330 141 105 189 353 353 41 205, 221, 355 166 259-260 166 232 176

371

211 269 193 62 364 132, 194 237 210 303 234 219 113 193 93 35 351 274 274 280 263 363 77 276 217 302 194 112 294 62, 361 62 274 249 274 119 275 269 205, 221 284 260 298 257 112 344 222 96 257

Index of Biblical References

128, 4 129, 3 135, 11-12 136, 7 136, 9 137, 6 138, 23-24 141, 5 141, 6 142, 6 144, 13 145, 4 146, 3 Proverbs (Prov.) 1, 25 1, 26-27 2, 14 3, 13-14 5, 22 8, 4 8, 12 14, 30 14, 33 16, 32 21, 20 24, 16 28, 9 28, 14 Ecclesiastes (Eccles.) 1, 18 9, 10

5, 1 5, 2 5, 3 5, 4 5, 5 5, 6 5, 8 5, 12 6, 5 7, 1 8, 13

356 199 102 338 70 91 290 276 266-267 141 363 131 157

Wisdom (Wisd.) 1, 4 1, 5 2, 2-3 2, 8-9 2, 21 2, 24 5, 6 6, 7 12, 18 16, 20

151 151 152 328 119 150 211 50 74, 323, 328 123 74, 323, 328 228 290 115, 272

Ecclesiasticus (Ecclus.) 10, 9 11, 27 27, 6 30, 24 32, 10-11 34, 24 36, 15 40, 1

50 58, 164

Isaiah (Isa.) 1, 6 1, 8 1, 14 1, 15 1, 19 1, 25 2, 2 3, 9 3, 12 3, 16-17 5, 1

Song of Songs (S. of S.) 1, 3 132 1, 3-4 169 1, 5 80, 81, 169 1, 11 182 1, 14 = 4, 1 134, 205 2, 5 = 5, 8 228, 257, 311 2, 15 191, 363 3, 9-10 74 4, 2 50, 311 4, 4 60 4, 9 311

372

150 88 94 155 139 156 203 134, 205 163 92 150 211, 342 136 330 242 313-314 61 80 93 235, 315 105 61, 93, 330 78 117 68, 325 278-279 184 154 65, 125 340 218 314 168 282 117 362 152 153 90-91 166

Index of Biblical References

5, 5 5, 7 5, 18 5, 25 9, 2 10, 27 11, 12 13, 21 17, 5 17, 6 28, 5 28, 19 30, 2 34, 14 36, 6 40, 31 42, 19 45, 12 46, 8 47, 1 49, 15 51, 23 52, 7 52, 7-8 53, 2 53, 2-3 53, 3 53, 8 54, 2 54, 11-12 55, 1 55, 13 56, 10 58, 13-14 60, 8 64, 6 65, 2 65, 20 66, 1 Jeremiah (Jer.) 2, 21 2, 32 5, 8 7, 16 9, 15

11, 19 11, 20 13, 23 14, 1 17, 5 17, 18 23, 23 25, 9 25, 38 26, 24

166 166 43 102 237-238 65 255, 312 195 110 110 361 115 143 195 121 275 76 155 114-115 41 283 177, 284 92, 116 60 280 295 236 236 190 321 355 312 324, 354 82 294 142 139, 239 228 176

Lamentations (Lam.) 1, 1 1, 2 3, 46 4, 2 Ezekiel (Ezek.) 1, 7 1, 26 2, 9 16, 48-49 18, 21 and 24 18, 25 20, 33 21, 30 23, 20 33, 12 and 15

170 283 258 246 259

168 133 300 327 92, 116 331 37 329 269 267 184-185 334 130 269

Daniel (Dan.) 3, 29-32 3, 31 12, 3

147 48 240

Hosea (Hos.) 2, 6-7 4, 2 4, 14 6, 4 7, 4 and 6 11, 8 11, 8-9

71, 119, 251 350 113 148 338 148 148

Joel

373

295 235 129 334 121, 344 315 306 252 252 102

1, 17 2, 13

130, 328 365

Index of Biblical References

Amos 3, 6 8, 11 Micah (Mic.) 3, 12

109, 218

Zephaniah (Zeph.) 1, 14-16

131

Haggai (Hag.) 2, 10

108

Zechariah (Zech.) 8, 13-15 9, 16 13, 1

108 321 142

Malachi (Mal.) 3, 2-3

117

2 Maccabees (2 Macc.) 15, 14

204

Matthew (Matt.) 2, 10 3, 10 4, 16 5, 4 5, 5 5, 14 5, 16 5, 28 5, 39 6, 22 7, 1 7, 6 7, 7 8, 20 9, 2-4 9, 34 9, 37 10, 5 10, 20 11, 15 11, 21

11, 28 11, 28-30 11, 29-30 13, 4 15, 14 15, 28 16, 24 18, 6 20, 22 21, 33 22, 13 23, 2-3 23, 4 23, 13 23, 32 24, 10-12 24, 21-22 24, 24 24, 28 24, 29 25, 8 25, 9 25, 41 26, 39 26, 42 27, 25 27, 39 27, 39-40 and 43 27, 40 27, 40-42 27, 42

163 103, 223, 335

269 110 237-238 175, 339 222 193 141 61-62 281 104 81 99 64 191 310 239, 302 103-104 99 143 295 266

374

27, 43 27, 44 27, 46 27, 60 28, 20

233 365 65 191 341 272-273 230 120 263, 350 166 49, 164 325 324-325 324 313 111 129 128 346 240 153 153 315, 365 248 263 293, 357 260-261 216 239 255 239, 260-261, 303, 309 235, 263, 303 50 235 303 50, 261, 296

Mark 10, 47 12, 40 13, 31 14, 57 15, 29 15, 31 16, 19

69 325 233 310 260-261 255, 260-261 41

Index of Biblical References

Luke 1, 35 1, 69 2, 34 5, 32 6, 21 8, 5 8, 12 9, 58 9, 62 10, 2 11, 9 11, 34 11, 52 12, 35 12, 49 13, 32 15, 7 and 10 15, 17 15, 21 17, 37 18, 38 19, 42 19, 42-44 19, 43 20, 47 22, 15 23, 21 23, 34 24, 21 John 1, 5 1, 9 1, 16 4, 13-14 4, 14 5, 22 6, 27 6, 33 6, 54 6, 55 6, 61 6, 67 7, 35 7, 37

7, 38-39 8, 10-11 8, 12 8, 34 8, 37 8, 48 10, 11 10, 12 11, 41-42 11, 48 12, 26 12, 27 12, 28 12, 32 13, 10 14, 6

348 180 255, 312 169 52 134-135 135 191, 234 88, 116 103-104 64 104 324 63 113 363 102 209 209 346 69 90, 256 57 256 325 269 310 168 304

14, 23 15, 4-5 15, 5 15, 22 15, 24-25 16, 24 16, 33 17, 1 18, 11 19, 31-33 19, 36 Acts 5, 41 9, 4 10, 13 13, 46 13, 52 14, 21

237 237 176 355 232 81 105 105 348 348 141 255 169 355

Romans (Rom.) 1, 20-21 and 26 1, 21 1, 28 2, 24 6, 3 7, 19 8, 26 8, 32

375

354-355 215 294 358 330 302, 309 62 93 305 313 230 238 238 50-51 94 62, 109-110, 172, 328 211 271 125 83 303 64 239 238 263, 350 242 242-243 118 197 49, 163, 311 55 118 129 87 292 70, 292 81 350 43 197 235

Index of Biblical References

10, 15 10, 21 11, 4 12, 1 12, 5 13, 11-12

254 139, 239 284 106 209, 307 49

1 Corinthians (1 Cor.) 1, 23 2, 6 2, 8 2, 11 3, 1-2 3, 2 3, 11-15 3, 16 3, 17 4, 5 4, 7 4, 9 6, 16-17 10, 4 11, 31 11, 32 12, 26 14, 20 15, 34

254 326 254 152 68 326, 336 132 100, 320 100 352 125 54, 255 176 345 68 72 110, 145 68 49

2 Corinthians (2 Cor.) 2, 15 5, 1 6, 15 6, 16 7, 5 11, 29

182 354 157 194 157 110

Galatians (Gal.) 1, 10 3, 13 4, 19 4, 31 5, 24 6, 14

Ephesians (Eph.) 2, 19-20 2, 20-21 4, 27 5, 14 5, 18 5, 27 6, 12 6, 16 6, 17

157 320 99 49 70 168, 247 339 257 334

Philippians (Phil.) 2, 7 2, 8 2, 9-11 3, 8 3, 13-14 4, 4

268, 363 238, 362 238 327 88 118

Colossians (Col.) 2, 3 2, 11 3, 9-10 1 Thessalonians (1 Thess.) 4, 4-5 5, 3 5, 7 5, 21-22

157 194 336 274 361 71-72, 360

376

47 350 244 339 297 48-49 265

1 Timothy (1 Tim.) 3, 1-5 3, 7 3, 15

111 157 211

2 Timothy (2 Tim.) 2, 19 3, 12 4, 3-4

272 287 105

Titus (Tit.) 1, 16 3, 10-11

101 99

Index of Biblical References

Hebrews (Hebr.) 1, 12 4, 12 12, 6 13, 14

363 334 236 282

James (Jas.) 1, 11 1, 26 2, 13 2, 19 2, 26

80 279 68 201 76

1 Peter (1 Pet.) 1, 6-7 1, 12 2, 5 2, 9 2, 21-22 2, 22 3, 12 4, 18 5, 6 5, 8 5, 8-9

2 Peter (2 Pet.) 2, 22

131

1 John 1, 5 1, 8 2, 15-16 2, 23 3, 10 4, 20

294 244 151 55 176 290

2 John 1, 10 Revelations (Rev.) 2, 7 3, 9 3, 17 3, 19 5, 10 6, 10 7, 17 = 21, 4 12, 10 22, 11

129 47, 98 321 63 307 348 91 132 284 254 99

377

99 296 55 236 113 63 308, 353 222 217 79, 129

Index of non-Biblical Sources

This is an index of those passages from non-biblical sources, and those only, which are cited verbatim in the main body of the translation. CC CM 244, pp. 365-386 may be consulted for other passages mentioned in the footnotes. Ambrose Off. 1, 124 Augustine Conf. 4, 11, 16 8, 5, 10

Gregory the Great Epist. app. p. 1102 289 In euang. 10, 6 328 12, 1 200 13, 1 63 17, 3 51, 103-104, 223 17, 15 318-319 39, 3 58

277

48 43

Caesarius of Arles Serm. 3

136

Cicero Off. 3, 1

278

Cyprian Mortal. 19

147

Dicta Catonis 1, 14, 2

152

Ps. Gregory the Great Respons. 782C 116 Horace Epist. 1, 2, 40 Hymns (Walpole) 2, 25-28 63, 1

378

62 92 231

Index of non-Biblical Sources

Jerome Epist. 53, 11, 3 In Ier. 3, 26

94-95 334

Juvenal 1, 88-89

157

Leo The Great Tract. 35, 3-4

365-366

Lucan 1, 32 1, 501 and 503 2, 268 2, 592-593 4, 97

41 155 107 54 102

Paschasius Expositio in Lamentationes Hieremiae 3 (p. 193) Petronius 82, 5

272, 306

Regula Magistri THS 24

70

Seneca Epist. 7, 7 72, 3

69 80

Symmachus Relationes 3, 10

86

Venantius Fortunatus Carmina 8, 3, 296

96

Vergil Aeneid 1, 94 2, 426-428 4, 12 4, 13 10, 680 12, 84 Eclogues 7, 48 Georgics 1, 30 1, 145-146 2, 484 2, 541

Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum 35 348 Ovid Tristia 1, 9, 5-6

Regula Benedicti prol. 18

47

285 72

379

39 285 95 65 134 330 108 72 65 291 316

Index of Latin Words

This index lists various Latin words whose meaning is discussed or remarked on in the footnotes. dealbatus 240 decolorus 321 deicere 101 digerere 44 dissimulare 68 dominus 347 falerae 232 familiariter 279 figurate 265 germanitas 351 gloria 95 habere 61 haurire 205 hic 65, 183 homo 286 honestus 353 iecur 204 ignauus 130 indigeste 44 indignanter 235 indignitas 124, 211, 235 insignire 89 insolenter 256 intentio 289 intimus 241 inuolucrum 105 iste 65, 183 laciniosus 341 lacteolus 83

accidens 352 (ad) gratiam 173 affectus 89 ampullari 71 aqua (pl.) 354 arguere 144 arpagare 253 barbarus 54 calcator 169 calor 146 capere 330 capitulum 304 caritas 276 causa 130 cautela 227, 280 censura 278 circulator 114 clamor 192, 198 cognitor  307 colon 220 comma 73, 220 commendare 263 compar 212 conficere 262 conuincere 365 conuoluere 265 cornu 166 corporaliter 233 curare 226

380

Index of Latin Words

regula 196 res familiaris 96 rima 155 salubris 197 salutaris 275 sanctificatio 192, 194 sermo 75, 318 sicarius 226 simbolum 160 simplicitas 195 simulacrum 144 singularitas 181, 279 spatiari 61 speculator 60, 340 supremus 145 tabernaculum 189 temporaneus 67 terra 175 uernaculus 351 uersiculus 45 uersus 45, 314 uictus 348 uir 286 uirtus 39, 181 uitaliter 204 unctius 98 uniuersaliter 233 Zephirus 112

lanio 324 lectio 171, 183 letargus 88 libertas 229 libramen 233 luxuria 182 maturus 152 miles 123 mistice 265 nodus 146 norma 196 obex 176 oppignerare 204 ordo 355 os 282 ostentum 222 palmites 167 pampini 167 particulariter 233 partius 282 perfectus 155 phisicus 140 plaga 294 principalis 136 propago 260 quoniam 154 recidere 196 reclinatorium 74

381

Index of Names

References here to e.g. Augustine and Isaiah will enable the reader to track down some allusions to passages that are not cited verbatim and so do not appear in the Index of Sources or of Biblical and Non-biblical References. Those other indexes are complementary to this one. Biblical citations are not indexed. Athanasius 51 Athens 94 Augustine 15, 19, 20, 32, 43, 45, 108, 118, 189, 215, 240, 256, 273, 274, 291, 324 Ps. Aurelius Victor 309 Ausonius 15

Abelard, Peter 283 Abraham 36, 337 Absalom 282, 297 Academics (philosophers) 247 Adam 248 Æthelstan, king of England 9 Ahaz 356 Aldhelm 9 Alexander (the Great) 94 Ambrose 14, 15, 86, 257, 265 Ammonites 42, 54, 161, 253 Amorites 337 Andrée, A. 12, 13 Andrew, the apostle 360 Anselm 15, 212, 214 Antiochuses 192 Apollo 291 Apponius 15 Apuleius 15, 113 Aquinas, Thomas 275 Arabia, Arabs 42, 66, 122 Aristotle 185 Arius, Arian heresy 17, 51, 85, 86 Assyrians 121, 226, 293, 335, 356

Babylon 74, 213, 234, 252, 258, 270, 318, 344 Babylonians passim Bede 15, 106, 197, 237, 241, 272, 284 Ps. Bede 125 Benedict, Rule of (Regula Benedicti) 93, 155, 190, 272, 285, 306 Canaan (region) 36 Canaan, son of Ham 357 Cassiodorus 15, 291 Chaldea 234 Chaldeans, often for Babylonians Chilon 291

382

Index of Names

Farmer, H. 11, 12, 15, 23 Fulgentius 105

Christ (often our Lord, the Lord) as both human and divine 305, 347-348 as priest 191 attributes of 98-99 life of 234-235 mother of 348 Passion of 17, 50, 122, 156, 193, 194, 197, and very commonly in Books 3-4 date of 357 treatment of in Bk. 3 232, 233 Christian(s) passim Christianity 11, 81, 87, 165, 239 Cicero 15, 138, 278, 306 Cyprian 51, 147 Cyrus 271, 318

Gedaliah (Godolias) 187, 270 Gentile(s) 69, 76, 98, 111, 122, 124, 140, 157, 176, 199, 200, 225, 226, 342, 343, 347 and Jews 55, 97, 261 and persecution 49, 55-56, 67, 99, 170, 247, 287, 308, 352 called dogs by Christ 302 church of 257 conversion of 87, 135, 348, 350 madness of 49, 51 we who came from 348 See also heathen [in Index of subjects] Gilbert the Universal 13 Godfrey, abbot of Malmesbury 9 Greece 291 Greek letter thau 229 Greek words 103, 189, 204 Gregory the Great 13, 15, 18, 39, 49, 115, 200, 248, 300, 316, 319, 335 Ps. Gregory the Great 116, 304

David, king of Israel 123, 136, 180, 252, 253, 281, 282, 297, 338 as prophet 84, 189 as psalmist 136, 293, 313, 363 descendants, stock of 69, 142, 180 lament for Saul and Jonathan 37, 297, 331 son of (Christ) 69 Tower of 59 true David (Christ) 253 David, king of Scotland 9 Dunstan, St 10, 221

Ham 357 Hebrew language 231 letters 14, 16, 21, 37, 40, 45, 173, 232, 265, 274, 300 word 189 Hebrews 293 Hegesippus 15, 173 Henry [I], king of England 11, 324 Herod 363 Hezekiah 121, 180, 343 Hilary 51 Hildebert of Lavardin 144 Horace 71, 98, 131 Hugh of St Victor 283

Eden 189 Edomites 161, 253, 349, 351 Egypt, Egyptians 36, 89, 161, 218, 248, 252, 270, 344, 356, 357 Mourning of the Egyptians 36 England 9, 10, 11, 12, 18, 112, 122, 324, 361 Epicureans 287 Esau (Edom) 178, 349 Eunomians 86 Euripides 138 Eusebius 15 Ezekiel 37, 92, 105, 200, 267, 294, 312, 329, 336

Isaac 36, 210 Isaiah 38, 111, 175, 196, 213, 332 Isidore 15, 50, 66, 94, 140, 142, 176, 248, 254

383

Index of Names

various calamities of 16, 122, 192, 293, 314, 337 See also Jews, Mount of Olives, Mount Sion, Sion, Tower of David Jews (for William’s view generally see 16-17, 18), Jewish attributes barbarity 329 constancy in crime 314 sacrilegiousness 337, 342 savagery 324 stubbornness 59 vice-ridden 38, 67 banned from Jerusalem by Hadrian 315 behaviour causes downfall 122 beliefs at least are monotheists 124, 239 believing 49, 350 correct belief of 322 future believers 348 captivities 102, 347, 356 Christ, views on 235, 259, 263, 303, 360 ill-treatment and killing of 226, 242, 254, 260261, 263, 294, 302, 303, 304, 307, 309, 310, 311, 313 diaspora 293 dream of Millennium 138 hated by neighbours 54-55, 79, 138, 349 history of 192, 248, 270-271, 293, 314-315, 356-357, 357-358 insulted by Saracens 139 kingdom of 180 mock Christians 81 modern 259, 293 peculiar customs of 54, 79, 138139, 192, 348 poisonous wit of 268 profit-oriented 102, 138 protecting their laws 227

Israel 16, 36, 37, 38, 84, 112, 142, 166, 174, 178, 180, 220, 248, 252 Israelites 54, 58, 60, 66, 73, 84, 94, 148, 218 Jacob 36, 140, 178, 179, 182, 210, 271, 349, 356 James, the apostle 76, 201, 279 Jebusites 338 Jeremiah 16, 17, 36, 73, 189, 204, 252, 277, 279, 290 addressed by God 271 as orator 16, 331 as prophet 79, 138, 189, 234, 281, 301, 348, 351 his personal sufferings 144, 234, 246, 258, 301-302 Lamentations of 36, 37 metre of 231 pains taken with 233, 317 Jerome 13, 14, 15, 16, 36, 37, 38, 89, 160, 213, 231, 232, 265, 308, 315, 334 Jerusalem anniversary of fall of 315 bishops in 361 chief city of Judaea 298, 322 former greatness of 42, 66, 173, 215, 322 fortifications of 338 local enemies of 138, 161, 253 name changed 314-315 on high, heavenly 78, 104, 241, 246, 351 patriarch of 360 placed by God like a tent 188 Solomon’s altar at 192 speaks 137, 143, 168 survivors of fall of 46, 78 temple of 12, 73, 97, 108, 173, 174, 183, 189, 192, 194, 226, 296, 318, 322, 342 under siege 225-226, 246, 258, 282, 293, 334, 335-336, 338 uninhabited for 70 years 108, 138, 189

384

Index of Names

Meaning (non-allegorical) of names Assyrians 356 Chaldeans 359-360 Edom 350 Egypt 89, 356 Jacob 140 Jerusalem 140 Judah 55, 360 Libanus 74 Sion 59, 60, 176 Uz 350 Meldunum 33 Micah 218 Moabites 42, 54, 161, 253 Moses 37, 38, 61, 97, 192, 218, 243, 265, 271, 312 Mount of Olives 353 Mount Sion 182, 362

scriptures, respected by 38, 174, 327 sins of, less excusable than Sodom’s 329 treatment of by God, varying 225, 235, 259 womenfolk, cruel 335 See also belief (in Index of Subjects), Gentiles, Hebrews, Israelites Job 38, 61, 77, 112, 218, 338, 349, 352 Johanan 270 John Chrysostom 348 John the Scot 70, 159, 174 Jonathan 37, 331 Joseph 61 husband of Mary 303 Josephus 15, 138, 226, 252, 258, 293, 336 Josiah 347, 349 Judaea 54, 169, 188, 223, 238, 293, 298 Judah 55, 84, 121, 252, 271 Judas 98, 302 Judas Maccabaeus 204, 252 Juvenal 15, 85, 139, 140, 157

Nazarites 331, 332 Nebuchadnezzar 97, 226, 252, 258, 318, 337, 344 Noah 357 Norman conquest 18, 122 Orosius 315, 353 Ovid 15, 17

Lactantius 309 Lazarus 39, 44, 297-298, 305 Leo the Great 365 Leviathan 218 Libanus, wood of 74 Lucan 15, 137, 138

Palestine, Palestinians 42, 66, 161 Paraclete 96, 136, 304 Paschasius Radbertus 13-14, 15, 73, 83, 89, 116, 160, 245, 249, 273, 286, 288, 291, 301, 336, 353 style of 20 Paul, St 164, 273 Pelagius, Pelagians 271-272, 281 Peter, the apostle 49, 92, 119, 129, 244, 284, 348, 360 Pfaff, R.W. 37 Philip of Macedon 94 Philon (rightly Chilon) 290-291 Pilate 242, 261, 310, 357 Plato 195 ‘Plinius Secundus’ (Pliny the Younger) 309 Pliny the Elder 140, 291

Maccabees 180, 252 Macedonians people 122, 192, 293, 314 sect 86 Maeldubh 9 Malmesbury 9, 12, 112 Manasseh 356 Marcionite heretics 286 Martial 139 ‘Master’, Rule of (Regula Magistri) 70 Matilda, queen of England 9

385

Index of Names

Sodom, Sodomites 19, 148, 182, 198, 329, 330, 337 Solomon 123, 144, 184, 192, 211, 252, 290, 338 Sønnesyn, S. 20, 23, 135, 159, 181, 212, 214, 229, 273, 283, 364 Statius 15, 41 Stephen, king of England 11 Syria, Syrians 42, 66, 161

Porphyry 261 Proteus 126 Prudentius 15, 53, 180, 225 Ptolemies 192 Quodvultdeus 142 Rabanus Maurus 13, 36, 43 Rabshakeh (Rabsaces) 121, 343 Red Sea 225 Robert of Cricklade 11 Robert of Tombelaine 15 Roger, bishop of Salisbury 11-12 Roman emperors 55, 86 Constantine 354 Constantius 308 Diocletian 308, 354 Domitian 308 Hadrian 314, 315, 337, 357 Julian 261, 308 Maximianus 308 Maximinus 261, 308, 312 Nero 308 Titus 226, 252, 314, 315, 336, 337, 357 Trajan 309 Valens 86, 308 Romans 122, 192, 292, 293, 313, 314, 337, 362 Rufinus 15, 86, 261 Ps. Rufinus 138, 226, 271, 293, 314 Rupert of Deutz 15

Terence 137, 227, 279, 345 Tertullian 289, 309 Themistius 86 Thomson, R.M. 16-17, 23, 130, 144 Turks 122 Tyrians 161 Valerius Maximus 186, 279 Verecundus 353 Vergil 15, 35, 147, 150, 151, 167, 205, 225, 249, 250, 259, 260, 360 William of Malmesbury and God 186 as sinner 169, 269-270 his Commentary addressee of 12-13, 172 consolations and profits in writing 172, 317 date of writing 10-12 dramatic scenes in 17 intention in writing 12, 17, 35, 231 sources of 14-15 style of 20-21 use of Paschasius 13-14, 15 life of 9-10 on forcing the sense 116, 175 on his own time 17-18 on Jews, see Jews other works GP 10, 12, 18, 61, 85, 112, 122, 146, 318 GR 9, 11, 12, 18, 44, 46, 47, 52, 75, 140, 146, 192 Historia Novella 11

Samaria 226, 335 Samson 94 Samuel 180, 297 Saracens 122, 139, 239 Satan 220, 229 Saul 37, 180, 297, 331 Scipio Africanus 278 Seneca 15, 119 Shem 357 Siloa 334 Sion 60, 137, 173 citadel of Jerusalem 59 See Mount Sion

386

Index of Names

Mir. 11, 100, 153 VD 221, 253, 262, 278, 341 VW 61, 64, 146, 147, 355 perhaps refers back to oral remarks 130 personal problems 18, 19, 186 revises an interpretation 163 sense of guilt 269 sympathy of for Jerusalem 16

turns forty 10, 35, 289 Wulfstan, St 10, 122 Xenocrates 279 Zechariah 91, 142 Zedekiah 73, 258, 344 Zephyr 112

387

Index of Subjects

buckler(s) 60, 314, 315 bulwark(s) 60, 196-197, 197, 220 chalice 263 children 57, 206, 207 chosen 130 city 300 clothing, gilded 178 clouds 294 coals 257 colour, finest 319, 320 columns 74, 239 corn 208, 210 countenance of God 343 crown 361-362 cup of the Lord 349, 350 darkness and not light 237, 239, 241 daughter(s) 206, 207, 336 of Jerusalem 203-204 of Judah 132, 179 of my people 336 of the church 299 of the prince 92 of the quiver 258 of Sion 73, 74, 76, 174, 176, 202, 220 day 48, 221 all the day 239, 241, 261, 310 dogs 104 drunk 349, 350 dung 327, 328 dust 281

Adultery 81, 136, 195, 215, 302 Affection(s) 70, 87, 130, 188, 249-250 See also emotions, fear, natural, passions Age of world, eighth 274 Ages, before and at end of 248 Allegorical interpretation 16, 17, and passim Allegorical meanings of above 115 altar 193, 194 among the Gentiles 199, 201 ancients 203 appoint a solemn day 62 arrows 255, 260 ashes 263, 264 at home 157 bars 199, 200 bed 276 behold 91 belly 281 birds 134, 191 bitterness 261, 262 bolts 200 bones 116, 118, 156, 243, 244-245, 333 bow 72, 183, 184 bowels 156, 159, 206, 207 bread 103, 105, 208, 355 break of day 271 breaking 245 breath of our mouth 347

388

Index of Subjects

infants 130 Israel 174, 182, 187 ivory 331 Jacob 178, 182 jasper 321 jaws 49, 52 Jerusalem 140, 182 killing 228 kings 200, 339 labour 314 lamps 63 languish 269 land 175 of Hus 350 of Israel 174, 176 light 193 lions 350 liver 206-207 loins 63 lord of swine 208 lords 67, 70 lying without 227 mighty men 130, 131 milk 324, 325, 326, 331 moon 240 morning 93 mother(s) 81, 209, 353, 354 mountains 346, 362 mouth of the Lord 143, 145 myrrh 139 naked 349, 350 nations 56 neck 60, 356 newness 244 night 48-49, 221, 222 noble 322 offering, head and tail of 251-252 oldness 243, 244 ostriches 324 passing by 93, 109 pasture 77 paths turned upside down 250 people  81 pit, lowest 305 potter’s hand 322, 323 pouring out heart 223

eagles 346 earth 176 enemies 162, 164, 244 evening 93, 104 eyes 205, 206, 265, 299, 344 face of God 343 failing of eyes 205, 207 father 353 feet 90, 92, 94, 115, 116, 119 filthiness of 90, 92 under God’s 285 fetters 248 filthiness 90, 92 fire 116, 185, 288 flesh 244 flesh pots 89 food 153 footstool of God 174, 175, 177 foxes 191, 293, 362, 363 gall 267, 268 garden 189 gates 62, 64, 199, 200, 339, 361 Gentiles 201 gold 132, 319, 320, 322, 323 grape cluster 110 grass 80-81 haircloth 202 hand(s) 100, 102, 139, 155, 184, 223, 329, 330, 356 strengthening of hand 183, 184 turning 238, 240 hanging up 360 harvest 110 head 202 heart 156, 159 heaven 176, 240 under the heavens 315 hedges 224 highways 224, 276 horn 180, 181, 182, 220 of the altar 62 house(s) 210, 211 of the Lord 58, 362 inebriate with wormwood 259, 261, 262

389

Index of Subjects

tabernacle 184, 190 taking nothing 330 teeth 49-50, 160, 163, 262, 264, 265, 311 tent 190 thirst 261 torrent 221 towers 194 vineyard 111, 166, 169, 170, 259-260 vintage 110 virgins 63, 146 of Jerusalem, Juda 202 wall(s) 196, 197, 198, 220 of churches 193 of towers 194, 195 washing 94 watchmen 276 water(s) 354, 355 divisions of 297 mud of 323 ways 62 widows 353-354 winds 77 wine 210 winepress 129-130, 132 women eating children 227, 336 wood 333, 355, 360 of Libanus 74 wormwood 259, 261, 262, 267, 268 yoke 122 young men 146 Alms 103, 329, 341, 356 Alphabet(s) 37-38, 40, and frequently Altar of the Cross 156 Altars, various 192 Ambition 151, 170, 341, 344 Angels 105, 182, 196, 197 guardian angel 191 Anger of God 66, 117, 146, 183, 228, and often denied 113, 195, 235, 315 See also irascibility, punishment

poverty 267 priests 63 princes 130, 179, 200 quiver 258, 260 raising oneself above oneself 279 rams 243 reins 259 renewal 244 salvation of God 274 sanctuary, entering 99 of God 227, 321, 341 slaying in 227 stones of 319 sapphire 321, 331, 332 scarlet 327, 328 seat 74 seeing 91-92 shoes 92 silver 132 Sion 60, 196, 322, 337 sons of 322 (see also daughters) sitting 202 skin(s) 243, 244, 245, 333 skirts 341 sleep 49 snow 331 solid parts 115 son(s) 176 of men 176 of my mother 81, 169 of Sion 322 speaking (of God) 109 stars 240 steps 74, 188 stones 319, 320, 321 fitting of 57 precious 132 square 247 storerooms 132 streets 223, 276, 319 lying in 206 strength 275 sucklings 130, 206, 207 sun 80-81, 240 sword 72

390

Index of Subjects

of Gentiles 76, 350, 360 of Jews 84, 90, 259, 313, 315316, 318 of the tortured 68 See also heathen, infidels Believers, relatively few 51 Bishops at Jerusalem 361 modern 18, 129, 181, 184, 190, 219, 340, 354 Blessed [passim of prophets, saints], blessedness 39, 71, 214, 272, 273, 280, 283, 286 soul 77, 203 See also happiness Body and soul, relationship between  159, 187, 245 at death 53, 56, 57, 126, 153, 255, 257 body given life, steered by soul 43, 299 body weighs down, constricts soul 153-154, 170, 245, 249 elements in 39 heart rules 77, 154 humours of 139, 159 senses of 64, 151, 175, 200, 214, 288 See also mind Bodily things, used to express incorporeal  153-154 Boredom 81, 107, 183, 190 Bowels, loose 154 Bread 50, 102, 103, 208, 263, 323 from heaven 328 in plural 209 Brevity of expression 13, 35, 62, 111, 247 of life 93, 119

Animals, beasts as irrational  19, 63, 77, 159 as savage 84, 217, 296 as unfeeling 160 brute 321 domestic 104 horned 180 love their young 84, 335 men named after 130 unclean 265 Ants 232 Apostates 98 See also lapsing Arguments, argumentation 80, 85, 91, 99, 213, 247 See also reasonings Arrogance 54, 61, 78, 90, 124, 125, 131, 159, 256, 314 See also pride Ascension, Christ’s 304 Ascent, see heaven Ash Wednesday 263, 266 Avarice, greed 44, 66, 76, 79, 93, 94, 98, 121, 128, 184, 189, 226, 256, 328 Axes 101 Bad things, two types of 163 Baptism 50, 74, 94, 132, 161, 244, 350 Barbarians (see n. on p. 54) 59, 145, 355 See also foreign Beauty of God 47, 99 of style 107 of women 61, 73 of young men 114, 332 Being and non-being 212 Belief correct (right) 76, 156, 195, 322 in Trinity 38, 40, 89 unbelief, unbelievers, disbelief 49, 67, 117, 175, 178-179, 240, 243, 263, 268, 287, 293, 344, 363

Cannibalism 84, 225-226, 335-336 Capacity (uirtus)  39, 181, 250 Castles 246

391

Index of Subjects

today [et sim.] 11, 18, 38-39, 51, 75, 79, 88, 92, 105, 129, 179, 323, 341 universal 176, 239, 271, 299, 317, 351 weaker members [et sim.] 74, 75, 110, 156, 243 See also catholic, eye, faith, glory, history, Holy Spirit, hope, joy, love, masters, peace, poverty, prayer, princes, rulers, synagogue, tears, worthiness Circumcision 139 Circumlocution 91 See also periphrasis City, what embellishes 42 Clothes 60, 63, 151, 178, 327 Coals 257, 262 kinds of 332 Colon 220 Commata 73 Common people, commons 42, 73, 102, 104, 127, 180, 213, 245, 259, 297, 340, 347 the common man 128 Communion 168 Compassion heedless 299 of Christ 239, 244 of God 67, 214 of Jeremiah 210, 259 Compunction 221, 222, 257, 260, 297, 362 grace of 36 tears of 205, 311, 355 two types of 300 wound of 311 Concupiscence 151 See also desire Concupiscibility 39, 181 Confession 55, 62, 117, 120, 132, 178, 202, 203, 239, 244, 281, 289, 298, 300, 360 Congregation of the wicked 240 Congregations 219, 353

Catholic church (and the like) 49, 55, 124, 209, 346 communion 51 faith 85, 340, 361 peoples 354 Catholics 86 bad 17, 80, 140, 141 Caves 253, 358 Chance 80, 89, 105, 114, 283 See also fortune, luck Charity 65, 74, 163, 184, 195, 197, 262, 276, 290 See also love Chastity, continence 19, 37, 60, 61, 63, 71, 128, 139, 146, 278, 289, 321, 331, 355 Chosen, see elect Church as a whole, allegorised 17, 38 career in 346 choirs of 37 churches in antiquity 183, 354 individual, world-wide 49, 209, 299, 336, 353, 354 modern 76, 184 beautifying 323 congregations 219, 353 doctrine of 103, 116, 117 early 55-56, 67, 87, 117, 128, 190, 305 enemies of 68, 80, 98, 162, 163, 169, 346 head of (Christ), 117, 156, 232, 233, 304, 307 higher members of 117 honours 181 individuals in 122 lower members of 116, 117, 358 mother e.g. 49, 134, 135, 140, 146, 151, 271 of Gentiles 257 on earth and in heaven 176 ornaments 184

392

Index of Subjects

last day evoked 53, 56-57, 126, 229, 250, 262 not to be forgotten 94-95, 114 of friends 48 of the soul 106, 112, 157, 159, 211, 328, 340 preferable if swift 333-334 sword of 159 See also body, demons, fear, flesh, judgement Demons, minions of Devil at death (q.v.) e.g. 19, 56-57 cults of 198 enemies of church 80, 98, 99, 162 enemies of soul 70, 82, 164, 190-191 envious 69, 164, 165, 216 figured by birds 134 in early days of church 87 jeering, mocking 53, 82, 93, 106107, 164, 216, 338 speeches of 165, 216, 217 torturing 68 triumphant 70, 101, 216 wander in space 165, 170 See also example, freedom, happiness, joy, prayer, pride, spirits, temptation, torture Desert 84, 192, 312, 324, 358 of this world 325 See also wilderness Desire 39, 95, 133, 199, 250 contends with reason 186 for heaven 321, 331 inflammatory 48, 182, 359 See also concupiscence, concupiscibility, vices Despair 19, 40, 64, 78, 120, 143, 164, 203, 212, 222, 228, 248, 266-267, 277, 305 Devil, the Enemy 19, 148, 157, 182, 208, 217, 229, 254, 280, 322 and Christ 99, 253, 255, 350 and false prophets 200 attacks church 60, 98, 134, 253 cunning counsellor 350

‘Connections’ of Hebrew letters 14, 40, 58, 65, 83, 89, 133 Conscience 19 and beliefs 87 and sin 120, 194, 202 as guide to understanding and behaviour 109, 119 as prison 250 at death 53, 250-251 carried around 126 examination of 107 good 175, 191, 271, 273 humble 125 noise of 203, 207, 244 tells truth 153 torments, punishment inflicted by 57, 64, 88, 118, 141, 185, 188, 215, 244, 275 anticipating torments of hell  52, 118, 364 Contemplation 202, 211, 241, 275, 279, 324 contemplative, active life 331 See also meditation Conversion 211, 299, 364 disgraceful 199 of Gentiles 87 Court (royal) 42 Craft, of Christ 142 Cross 229-230, 239, 312, 348 altar of 156 Curing meat 226 Curiosity 139, 151 Curving, right and wrong 284 Custom 43, 105, 202 religious  139 Damned, the 254, 364 Darkness, interior and exterior  49 Days, eight, of the world 274 Death, passim 119, 345 cup of 112 dead bodies  53, 93 eternal 72 kindly 74 kinds of 303, 333

393

Index of Subjects

Elements below 172 in body 39 in heaven 174 Elephants 331 Eloquence 75, 110, 114, 117, 254, 324, 341, 355 of Cyprian 51 of Jeremiah 220, 270, 274, 331, 351 of Pope Leo 365 of prophets 131 of William 16, 61, 113, 232 Emotion(s)  207, 269 ascribed to God 195, 235, 292, 309 (but see 109) conflict of 64, 134 of Jeremiah 224, 227 See also affections, passions, and individual emotions Envy 55, 61, 191 characteristic of Jews 216, 254 See also demons Example(s)  19, 124, 134, 153, 225, 296 and word 179, 244 bad  39, 56, 75, 80, 180, 182, 202, 206, 278, 330, 340, 341 figurative and concrete 44-45 good 51, 61, 92, 117, 229, 257, 318 in Gospels 139 of apostles 243 of Christ 230, 266, 282, 299 of Devil, demons 201, 216 of saints 143 Exile of soul 56, 76, 106, 159, 266 Eye(s)  151, 155-156 concupiscence of 151 feeding of 44, 61 of church 134, 299 of eagle 275 of God 91-92, 103, 122, 333, 354 of heart 241, 305 of reason 67 of soul 53, 206 See also mind

deceitful 254, 322 evils sent, inspired by 49, 70, 179, 217, 359 fighting 146 figured by birds 134 flattery of 323 harries, pursues soul 61, 77, 100, 101, 112, 135, 195, 220, 256, 262, 272, 300 imitating, following 175, 201, 212 laughs 96 plunder from 264 proud 101 suggesting 249, 250 tribute paid to 42, 43 yoke of 65 See also demons, prince, temptation Dicing 75, 157 Digestion 44 ‘Dignities’ 43, 319 Dirt, metaphorical 177, 187, 244, 300, 321 of ashes 203 dirty feet 94 dirty soul 113 See also filth Discretion 299 Disease 98, 159 See also illness Doctors 140 Dove(s) 134, 205, 245, 252 Drunkenness 195 metaphorical 82, 169 Eagles 275, 346 Earth, earthly, frequent in opposition to heaven and heavenly Eight 273-274 Elect, chosen 127, 129, 145, 193, 273, 281, 312, 364 and damned 364 church of the elect 239, 240, 269 soul 131, 241

394

Index of Subjects

Fear often an affection of the soul 249 holy/servile 273 of death 201, 248 of despair 248 of God 58, 96, 113, 185, 272, 273, 333, 356 of hell 84, 275, 300 of last judgement 58 of punishment, torment 207, 272, 275, 279 Feelings 48, 103, 137, 170, 214, 227, 229, 249, 255 human 248, 287, 309 See also affections, emotions, mind, passions Figures, rhetorical 16, 106, 281 abusio, catachresis 109 allegory 281 and passim anaphora 284 apostrophe 107 climax, gradation 66 concession 270 expression like ‘is mindful and remembers’ 268-269 homoeoteleuton 284 hyperbaton 50 hyperbole  50, 330, 332, 346 metaphor  46, 59, 107, 121, 131, 175, 176, 199, 221, 252 prolepsis, praeoccupatio 237 synecdoche 50, 145 Filth, filthy, filthiness: frequently of the earthly (e.g. 187, 199, 221, 323), sin and vice (e.g. 90, 92, 113, 262, 350), hell (165), pleasure (e.g. 198, 321) See also dirt Fire 84, 97, 113, 124, 181, 262, 329, 338 of conscience 64, 185, 251 of desire 182, 359 of Devil, hell 69, 112, 132, 165, 185 of divine wrath, punishment 115, 118, 132, 185, 225, 337 of God’s love 355

Faith, passim and hope 194-195, 204, 223, 276 and morals, works 55, 61, 76, 87, 195, 197, 203, 206, 322, 341 and peace 128 catholic 85, 340, 361 Christian 101, 259, 348 correct  201, 202 denial, renunciation of 156, 247, 253 deserting, giving up 75, 117 early days of 81, 190, 304, 305 first of virtues 322 lack of, faithlessness 60, 75, 81, 83, 91, 130, 134, 135, 139, 157, 175, 178, 257, 294, 322, 365 [see also belief] light of 49 of baptism 350 of church 38, 63, 178, 272 of David 69 of Jews 189 of the Passion 350 our faith 61, 168, 312 shadow of 76 shield of 358 shown by Gentiles 343 to friends 48 wavering  39, 117-118, 243 weapons of 101 See also lapsing, mind, thirst, virtue, works Faithful, the 117, 134, 162, 192, 202, 264, 265, 354, 355 Fall, the 291 Famine, hunger 73, 102, 103, 150, 154, 155, 208, 293, 323, 324, 327, 332, 333, 335, 336, 341, 345, 358 bad for teeth 262 hunger felt by Christ 313 hunger not felt by spirit 153 spiritual 18, 72, 103-104, 223, 335, 359 Fantasies, night 213, 321 Fate 250, 287

395

Index of Subjects

of prose 220 of soul 47, 210, 218, 229 Friends, friendship 12, 36, 46-48, 52, 53, 84-85, 91, 133, 149, 150, 152, 153, 278 friend of king 11, 158 God as friend 47, 251, 347 law of friendship 172

of Holy Spirit 116, 118, 119, 288, 304, 338, 355 of the Passion 156 of persecution 116 of tribulation  119, 180 purifying 117, 132 spiritual 288 testing 132 towards God 35 Flattery 51, 85, 92, 98, 100, 141, 152, 153, 302, 310, 323, 340, 355, 358 Flesh 71, 150, 243, 244, 245 agonies contrived for 68 and death  71, 209 and sin  350 and soul 249, 276, 279 Christ’s  198, 238, 294, 313, 363 concupiscence of  151 pleasures of 200 temptations of 151, 249, 250, 360 weakness of 321, 333 See also impulses, wisdom Flowers 173 of virtues 176, 190 Foreign, foreigners 41, 54, 94, 97, 98, 102, 155, 234, 318 See also barbarians (note on p. 54) Forgiveness of sins 37, 45, 78, 95, 107, 143, 177, 183, 198, 207, 215, 228, 248, 266, 268, 283 Fortitude 100, 351 Fortune 46, 48, 56, 66, 78, 84, 85, 91, 107, 113, 131, 133, 138, 147, 288 See also chance, luck Four 37, 38, 39, 44-45, 159, 249 Fowlers 301, 302 Free will 102, 110, 125, 179, 229 misuse of 125, 198 Freedom, liberty lost by captive Jews 53, 124, 138, 173 of believer 65, 274 of city, nation, monastery 12, 149, 344 of demons 170, 358

Garden of delights 142, 190 Gates, judges sit at 310, 359 Gestures 111, 137, 223, 239 Glory and forgiveness 95, 183 of church 42, 130, 187 of devils 101 of God 136, 176, 182, 232, 261, 348 of the just 37 of martyrs 129 of resurrection 193, 305 of virtues 319 spiritual, to be attained in heaven 19, 53, 82, 95, 100, 103, 160, 183, 207, 212, 221, 228, 230, 237, 248, 279, 282, 300, 336 worldly 54, 95, 114, 123, 190, 203, 330 Gluttony 98, 102, 106, 335 Goats 132 God and the Jews 128, 144, 342 attributes of 47-48 Avenger 127 beholds 194, 225 Creator, creator often and creature, creation 52, 70, 86, 154, 162, 176, 236, 283, 292 of the world 239 delays answering prayers, relenting 193, 272, 283, 289, 364 giving grace  101 punishing 57, 198, 228, 352353, 365

396

Index of Subjects

glory, grace, justice, mercy, nature, patience, patronage, salvation, thoughts, Trinity, Vintager, wisdom Good actions, deeds 95, 141, 142, 153, 217 See also works Gossip 83 Grace bestowal of 85 gifts of 198, 200 given gratuitously 275 God converts by 364 goes before 364 greenness of 333 holy share in 193 love for 84 of Christ 231 of compunction 36 of doing good works 176 of God, passim [note e.g. 124] of His spirit 116 of language 92 of predestination 273 piling up 224 prevenient 273 rising to 129 rules soul 200 serenity of 91 sold by priests 213 (cf. 355) virtues a source of 100 Graces 338 Grapes 110, 112, 169, 209 Greed, see avarice Green 81, 321 years 35 See also grace Grief, an affection of the soul 249

Doctor 67 ‘does’ by allowing 140, 163, 173, 180, 294 by not preventing 243 equity 121 gentleness of 177, 223, 285, 290 Giver 272 of life 43 of reason 159, 181 hand of 102, 125, 149, 184, 242 image of 63, 216, 320 incomprehensible 162 Judge 69, 146, 251, 307, 365 within 63, 153 lacks skin 243 law(s) of 58, 217, 270, 296, 342 likeness of 321 His love 36, 106, 156, 228, 257, 260, 275, 276, 355 men’s love for 75, 96, 275, 290, 292, 299 mercy of, merciful often, e.g. 46, 48, 69, 127, 177, 179, 186, 189, 199, 214, 272, 301, 316, 320 of Old Testament 286 people of, common 180 precepts of 365 punishing often punishes persecutors 308 scourge of 125, 147, 183 severity of 71, 122, 125, 153, 196, 214, 223, 246, 251, 256, 257, 334 thought undue by some 286 ‘simplicity’ of 195, 207 Son and Father 55 three in one 43, 320 thought unable to help His people 240, 353 truth 214 using bad to punish those He loves 124 warmth 113 Watcher 179 (cf. 153) See also anger, compassion, emotions, eye, fear, fire, friend,

Habit bad 58, 64, 80, 143, 251 of evil 45, 207 of virtue, good 275, 278, 279 of simulation 333 of sinning 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 198, 203

397

Index of Subjects

See also bread, joy, light, peace, prayer Heavenly and earthly 224 food 141, 152 house 354 life 141, 291 light 52 things 50, 63, 88, 275, 315, 321, 322, 331 virtues 63 wisdom 328 Hell anticipated by conscience 52 Christ in 237-238, 304, 305 going to or being in 52, 117, 137, 171, 212, 250, 296, 303, 334 law of 304 no legal forms in 126 perhaps a fable 185 torments of, punishment in 19, 126, 158, 165, 177, 185, 222, 268, 315 See also fear, filth, fire, underworld Heresy 49, 51, 63, 99, 224, 339, 341, 345 heresiarchs 98 Heretics  17 and passim Historians, histories  51, 66, 161, 173, 187, 225, 247, 259, 278, 314, 335 William the historian 9-10, 11, 17, 18, 20, 35 Historical interpretation 15, 16, and passim History an attractive genre 10, 35 church  261, 343 sacred  142 Holiness 123, 175, 199, 203, 280, 319, 347 of God 131, 284 See also sanctity Holy men 88, 104, 112, 297, 305, 331, 340, 354, 364 See also saints

Happiness, felicity 39, 48, 71, 88, 90, 96, 132, 202, 217, 273, 277, 322, 358 eternal, lasting, on high 52, 100, 123, 236, 266, 336 of demons, Devil 70, 170, 212, 216, 220 past 78 worldly 48, 90, 160, 267, 283 See also blessed Harmony of elements and capacities 39 of grieving 361 of humours 159 of virtues 70 of voices 44, 59 Hatchets 101 Heart (cor) often and mind 159 as opposed to lips 141, 310 Christ and 156 ear(s) of 195, 295 eyes of 241, 305 pleasures of  52 rules body, ruled by soul 77 See also thoughts Hearth cakes 262 Heathen, pagan 17, 42, 56, 67, 69, 101, 122, 124, 144, 199, 271, 287, 311, 315, 352, 363 a heathen (Cicero) 278 gods 144 literature 330 See also belief, Gentiles [in Index of names], infidels, persecution Heaven(s), often and earth 128, 147, 275 ascending, striving to(wards) 50, 63, 69, 112, 165, 216, 250, 256, 262, 274, 277, 315, 322 birds of 191 life in 205 reward in 128, 184, 195, 321, 332 those in 135

398

Index of Subjects

Injustice 53, 82, 267, 300, 309 the unjust (man)  79, 80, 129, 130, 347 Intellect 85, 98, 154, 206, 207, 232, 265, 266, 320, 330 See also understanding Intention(s) 89, 158, 223, 289 good 166, 223 Intercession  112, 135 Irascibility 39, 181 See also anger Irrationality 52 See also impulses, unreason Ivory 331

Holy Spirit dew of 182, 359 dwells in soul 319 inspired Jeremiah 224, 233, 274, 280 inspires William 317 onrush of 175, 224 Paraclete  96, 136, 304 position in Trinity 43, 86, 136 punishes 96 teaching  116, 288 warmth of 65 See also fire Hope 95, 106, 164, 207, 214, 215, 249 good 266, 270, 351 harmful 121 of church 151 See also faith Horses 129, 330 Host 193, 194 Humility 122, 179, 195, 216, 241, 280, 281, 319 of Christ 233, 363 of God 320 Humours, see body Hydra 140

Joy 249, 250 in heaven 52, 100, 132, 210, 230, 272, 276, 300, 331 in this world 58, 59, 78, 100, 129, 133, 149, 361 of angels 62 of church(men) 146, 162, 187, 306 of converted Gentiles 350 of demons 217 of triumphant enemies 79, 161, 193, 217, 219 Judgement, day of, last 58, 72, 132, 149, 153, 185, 229, 257, 302, 329, 365 Judges 38, 310, 312, 331 Justice 67, 100 and soul 207 and truth 214 of God 66, 67, 73, 91, 109, 145, 174, 179, 196, 214-215, 249, 286, 365 path of 75 rod of 236 rule of 196 Sun of 240 the just (man) 37, 80, 118, 129, 165, 228, 237, 249, 288, 340, 347

Idols, idolatry 87, 124, 340, 356, 357 Illness 88, 95, 113, 124, 147, 158, 344 cured by Christ 302 mental 81 See also disease Impenitence 80, 214, 215, 277 Impulse(s) 71, 103, 119, 182 bestial 64 human  221 irrational 53, 64, 71 lower 119 of the flesh 190 proud 71 rational 52 Infidels 139, 192, 240, 271 See also belief, heathen Ingratitude 36, 122, 244, 273, 281

399

Index of Subjects

inaccessible 237, 294 inmost 241 of conscience 109 of faith 49 of heaven, eternity 52, 101 of life 205 of truth 214 queen of heavens  158 Liver 204 Logic 352 Lords 54, 347, 353, 357 Love offered by church 140 of offspring 324, 335 of this world 48, 269 origin of virtues 299 wound of 228, 261-262, 311 See also charity, God Lovers 71, 323 Luck 42, 97 See also chance, fortune Lust(s) 43, 44, 55, 56, 61, 63, 64, 151, 187, 255, 321, 359 Luxury 69, 95, 115, 128, 142, 157, 159, 181, 182, 328, 337 eastern 234 luxurious clothes 201 food 151, 208

King, friend of 11, 158 Kings modern, criticised  18, 179, 180, 184, 190 protect subjects 178 types of 339 Kingship oil of 347 of Israel 180 Knowledge 47, 56, 74, 75, 98, 99, 117, 156, 200, 201, 207, 326, 340 literary 123 of Bible 323 of God, Christ 108, 198, 199, 273 secular 121 self- 283, 290 See also learning Laments, types of 36 Lapsing, defecting from the faith 79, 118, 156, 254, 271 into sin or vice 42, 56, 83, 92, 96, 202, 205, 206, 244, 321 See also apostates, persecution Law 81, 293, 327 and the prophets 58, 201 Jewish 38, 58, 94, 97, 108, 194, 199, 201, 329, 356 See also friendship, God, hell, metre, nature Learning 123, 130, 200, 205 divine 232 Leisure 82, 221, 278 Life appointed length of 35 eternal 75, 105, 120, 138, 143, 227, 272, 273, 288 good 98, 178, 207, 233, 292, 319 like a play 119, 120 See also body, brevity, contemplation, God, heaven, heavenly, public, yoke Light 133, 193, 240, 276, 356 contrasted with darkness  177, 237, 239

Madness 76, 80, 150, 152, 215, 307, 336 of Christians 184 of Gentiles 49, 51, 67 of Jews 259 of persecutors 196 of seers 213 of sinners 67 Man, two senses of 286 Martyrs, martyrdom 17, 74, 129, 130, 157, 219, 243, 247, 248, 264, 350, 352, 353, 355 Masters of secular knowledge 121 teaching in church 328, 340 See also teachers

400

Index of Subjects

Monks, monasticism, monasteries 15, 18, 81, 86, 155, 181, 184, 278, 323, 346 Moral interpretation 16, 19, and passim Moralising 11, 15 Motivation 95 Movement(s) of heavenly bodies 87 of mind 159 Music 59, 192 Mystery 60, 94, 180, 235, 338 (mysteries 132, 246, 255, 265, 328) of the Passion 237, 248, (cf. mystic melody 156) Mystical = figurative, e.g. 45, 160, 202, 208, 265 Myth 126

Maturity 150, 152, 202, 203, 279, 360, 361 Meaning, doing violence to 116, 175 Meditation 20, 172, 232, 269, 288 Memory 43, 103, 188, 265, 319, 320 loss of 88 William quoting from 21 Menstruation 140, 143 Mercy 68 dew of 219 God of 295 of Christ 198 of men  112, 171 See also God Metre  37-38, 40, 231-232 law of 220 Microcosm and macrocosm 106 Mind (animus, mens) often animus sometimes = ‘soul’ 22 and body 45, 63, 358 and conscience 52, 64, 118, 191, 194 and desire 186 and faith 105 and images of vice 45 and reason 58, 91, 119, 186 as opposed to money 47 eye(s) of 88, 205, 250, 256, 276, 292, 300 feelings of 214 movements of 159 peace of 276 ruling element in 202 servile 56, 71 tempted 158 thoughts from 57 wicked 44 See also heart Miracles 45, 61, 179, 225, 228, 238, 239, 240, 314 Mirrors 75, 205 Modesty 120, 125, 128, 321, 323, 331 of speech  278-279 Money 47, 75, 103, 114, 122, 189, 206, 323, 355

Nature and chance 283 and friendship 149 Author of 233 by (also naturally) 91, 122, 126, 136, 162, 164, 324, 325 corrupt(ed) 160, 279 defect in 158 human 78, 160, 162 law of 85, 124 limits of 52-53 of animals 64, 134 of Christ 85-86 of God 85, 111, 181, 292, 315 of men  64, 181, 278 of soul 43, 53, 131, 170, 340 of trees 359 order of 70 results from habit 245, 278 sports with onions 171 violation of 53 way of 80 Natural affections 130 action 159 as opposed to accidental 352 numbers  70

401

Index of Subjects

by the rich 344-345 of churches etc.  9, 157 Peace and different religions 54 as opposed to persecution 42, 55, 67, 74, 75, 117, 157, 219, 260 brought by Christ, God 67, 72, 74, 275 in Jerusalem 127, 258, 342 of heaven 203, 224 of mind 276 of the soul 57, 64, 87 of virtues 212 results of, in modern church 75, 128-129 Penance 67, 169, 186, 188, 214, 215, 228 Penitence  19, 48, 64, 65, 68, 87, 94, 96, 106, 141, 148, 186, 188, 209, 212, 214, 216, 218, 224, 257, 263, 266, 268, 277, 300, 365 the penitent 37, 136, 215, 248, 266, 299, 361 fruitful 126 good 201 treaty of 45 See also impenitence, repentance, tears Perfect man, the perfect, et sim.  87, 155, 224, 235, 265, 269, 270, 277, 278 Periphrasis 352 See also circumlocution Perjury, see oath breaking Persecution, passim allowed by God 116-117, 135, 163 by Christians 140 by Diocletian 353-354 by heretics 55, 140, 308 by infidels 271 by Jews 55, 81, 357 by pagans 49, 55, 67, 157, 170, 183, 308 Jews persecuted by God 314, 315 lapses during 75, 79, 239-240 of prophets 143, 301

passions 42 virtues 42 Neighbour, relations with one’s 39, 40, 68, 75, 141, 169, 184, 224, 257, 290, 299, 318 Nepotism 18, 181 Nuns 18, 323 Oath breaking, perjury 81, 195 Obedience, vow of 278 Old age 57, 93, 113, 203, 279, 289 of elephants 331 of horned animals 180 of malice 346 of sins 242 Onions 171 Orators 94, 306 Orchards 173, 189 Order of words 90, 331 Ostriches 11, 324, 325 Pagans, see heathen, infidels Palisades 57 Paradise 56, 106, 142, 189, 210, 334, 359 Paradox 204 Passions 19, 42, 111 Passions of martyrs 247 See also affections, emotions Patience 19, 237, 268, 270, 277, 280, 281, 283, 287, 351 as virtuous 100, 195, 319 instances of 61, 123 lack of 185, 274, 277, 284 of Christ 235, 263 of God 76, 178, 179, 181, 214, 219, 289, 314, 315, 320 of Job 61 practice in 353 urged on Jews 274, 282 Patriarch(s) 36, 69, 169, 271, 318, 356, 357, 362 of Jerusalem 360 Patronage and orphans 353 by God 137

402

Index of Subjects

See also fire, Gentiles [in Index of names], peace Persecutors and martyrs 355 curry favour of princes 287 of Christ 239 of Jeremiah 306 plundering 353 punished 16, 306, 308-309, 315 won over 163-164, 168, 261, 264 See also God, madness, torture, worthiness Personages 180 Persuasion 56, 68-69, 70, 87, 100 by philosophers 247 Philosophy, philosophers 15, 39, 80, 86, 87, 152, 247, 249, 279, 292 pseudo-philosopher 261 Physiology 331 Piety, pious 36, 120, 128, 145, 179, 197, 279, 365 pious pretext 323 pious violence 179 Pilgrims 323 Pirates 68, 101 Pity 53, 62, 102, 110, 126, 137, 138, 145, 215, 224, 229, 250, 270, 302, 336, 343 felt by Jeremiah 227 fountain of 143 God of 168 of Christ 148, 198, 239, 362 of God 82, 153, 158, 160, 222, 223, 238, 251, 267, 268, 272 sons of 236 Pleasure(s) Aristotle on 185-186 crucifying 229 distract William 172 divine 327 enjoyed by the young 190, 277 from friends 85 in sin 43, 44 of a people 167 of rulers 181, 190, 254

sensual, worldly 19, 52, 53, 56, 65, 71, 76, 82, 89, 119, 126, 133, 136, 139, 144, 146, 148, 198, 200, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 222, 256, 321, 326, 328, 350 shown by clapping 215 traces of in old age 289 See also filth, flesh, heart, repetition, torrent Poets 15, 220 Potter, derivation of Latin word 322 Pottery 322 Poverty in absence of God 72 life of 42 of Christ 234-235, 237, 268 of church 268 of monastery 323 of soul 241, 267 of spiritual good 236 rich and poor 114, 131 suffered by many 267 the poor (man) 51, 96, 184, 329, 330 Prayer 112, 129, 157, 170, 196, 204, 215, 271, 281, 319 against Jews 314 and penitence 224 and preaching 105, 128, 162, 230 and prophecy 79, 301 and sighs  203, 249 by church 157, 305-306, 308, 322 by demons 217 by Jeremiah 246, 267, 301, 352, 364 by Jerusalem, Jews  127, 149, 224 by William  12, 16, 96, 132, 177, 198-199, 230 concentrated 289 for friends 278 gestures accompanying 223 houses of 353-354 not immediately answered 272, 290 not reaching (or not moving) God  89, 174, 250, 294, 295

403

Index of Subjects

not doing their job 104 ranked among rulers 38 Princes 184, 245, 287, 300 Christian 140 in Jerusalem 246 of church 75, 98, 360 of malice  177 ‘prince’ used of Devil 191, 212, 217 Profit(eering), gain 17, 76, 85, 102, 128, 129, 138, 206, 207 Progress 58, 62, 128, 188 Prophets 15, 36, 66, 67, 143, 169, 199, 218, 226, 271, 297, 313, 329 Christ lord of 329 inspired 66, 143, 218, 281 Jerusalem home of 108, 362 pseudo-, false 200, 213, 214, 340 ranked as common people 67 ranked as rulers 38 threaten 109, 161, 219 See also blessed, Devil, eloquence, law, persecution Prose 220 rhyming 21 Prostitution (metaphorical) 43, 112, 146 Providence, divine 286, 288 Prudence, good sense 47, 100, 119120, 179, 203, 344 Public life, dangers of 158 Punishment and anger 111, 183, 195, 235, 236, 292 eternal, in hell  57, 93, 111, 118, 119, 127, 132, 158, 177, 185, 206, 222, 241, 242, 251, 267, 268, 269, 270, 284, 295, 325, 334, 336, 352 fear of 207, 279, 300 good for recipients 174 instances in Old Testament 225 of Christ 235 of Christians 135 of impenitent 215, 277

of Christ not answered 193, 248-249 praise in 251 repetition in 103 sent to heaven 63, 290 sins disquiet us during 89 suppliant 105, 218, 230, 272 Preachers, preaching 105, 117, 128, 130, 150, 162, 170, 190, 193, 196, 240, 241, 244, 264, 299, 313, 332 and morals of preacher  51, 75, 139, 151, 152, 200, 202, 339 and Song of Songs 139, 191 explaining Bible 50, 134, 200 famine, want of 18, 104, 152 holy 49, 50, 62, 63, 92, 116, 134, 176, 311, 339 lazy 103, 152 of apostles 74, 238, 254 of Christ 234, 239, 310 of Gospel 38, 209, 257 prayer better than 230 propped up by nobles 245 to Jews 257 See also prayer, sermons, teachers Predestination, book of 273 Pride, proud 71, 78, 101, 114, 115, 117, 142, 148, 175, 201, 280, 330 beginning of all sin 329 cure for 211 of Babylonians 97 of demons 69, 165, 216, 358 of Devil 101, 201 of God 284 of Jerusalem, Jews  122, 352 of priests 157 thoughts 131 See also arrogance Priest(s) [not including those in Jerusalem] 18, 128, 153 Christ as 191 Christians as 63 false 213 modern 157, 190, 319, 323, 340, 355, 356

404

Index of Subjects

Religion Christian 98, 156, 176, 265, 347 clash of religions 54 Jewish 79, 139 ‘religion’ 184 show of 324 unfamiliar 54 Religious, the 18, 179, 279, 319 Renewal 196, 204, 213, 228, 243, 244, 245, 275, 346, 364 Repentance 47, 68, 71, 79, 82, 119, 120, 136, 185, 186, 216, 219, 253, 312, 361, 366 failure to repent 118, 132, 202, 203, 220, 343 See also penitence Repetition avoided by William 147, 352 indulged in by William 35, 118, 126, 180 by Christ 243 by Jeremiah 103, 127, 133, 177, 186, 187, 199, 202, 211, 267, 308, 310, 345, 352 of pleasures 126 of word roots 46, 83 Resurrection of Christ 96, 112, 193, 261, 273-274, 304, 305 Rhetoric 16, 107, 121, 131, 194, 202, 247, 270, 331 See also figures Riches, wealth 18, 42, 46, 47, 51, 76, 92, 95, 118, 121, 129, 154, 173, 179, 206, 236, 245, 322, 338, 351, 355, 356 enough makes one rich 96 rich and poor 114, 131 rich men 51, 98, 113, 153, 154, 206, 344 Rods, of different kinds 236 Roots of words, see repetition Rulers and laws  167 and luxury 181

of Jews 97, 124, 225, 234, 259, 303, 314 of rivals 91 of Sodomites 329 of stubborn 37 of wicked 145 self- 120, 136 shared 164, 165 sin as 44, 70 temporal 72, 115, 120, 222, 223, 242, 349 unjust hardened to 129 See also conscience, God, hell, Holy Spirit, persecutors, suffering Rational numbers 159 See also impulses Rationality 39 See also reason Readers, reading 12, 36, 40, 91, 107, 108, 118, 171, 172, 173, 182, 183, 231, 248, 261, 265, 300, 304, 313, 317, 352 Reason 19, 39, 52, 60, 64, 78, 88, 91, 106, 118, 126, 159, 181-182, 186, 206, 207, 222, 240, 254, 319, 320 and desire 186 cloak of 254 eye of 67 loss of 81 perverted 320 soul’s, mind’s 58, 119, 159 See also animals, God, irrationality, mind, rationality, unreason Reasoning(s) 86, 91, 176, 179, 214, 259 See also arguments Redeemer, our 233, 234, 235, 242, 307 of soul 287, 328 redeeming 42, 78, 269, 291, 307, 357, 358, 363 Redemption 161, 271, 291, 307 Reins (i.e. loins) 258, 259, 260

405

Index of Subjects

See also knowledge, preachers, teachers, threefold interpretation Sea 61, 155, 212, 260 monsters 324, 325 of miseries 179 of vice 295 Seal 43, 106, 198, 209 Secular, lay ambition 151, 344 affairs 71, 169, 319, 323, 356 eminence, honour 157, 346 knowledge 121 princes 300 prudence 344 wisdom 323 writings 15, 41, 46, 268, 279 See also worldly Seeking, well and ill 276 Self-knowledge, see knowledge Senses, bodily 64, 133, 151, 175, 200, 214, 224, 288 five 151 Sermons 75, 128, 318 See also preachers Seven(th) 38-40, 49, 79, 138, 274, 290 Shame 48, 49, 53, 66, 71, 79, 106, 119, 125, 129, 137, 139, 140, 147, 152, 168, 172, 181, 185, 320, 343, 358 Shameless(ness) 39, 97, 98, 102, 120, 134, 157, 161, 162, 181, 230, 248, 360 Sheep 38, 50, 112, 132, 338 Shipwreck  120, 121, 155 of chastity 61, 323 of hope 82, 262 Sickness of the soul 106 Silence 60, 202, 203, 221, 244, 274, 276, 279, 316 Silver 72, 74, 81, 117, 132 Sin, passim 19 all men sin 244 and free will 125 original 56, 94, 357 remission of 120

of the church 75, 150, 157, 179, 227, 300, 339 orders of 38 Sabbath(s) 79, 81, 82, 83, 138, 189, 191 Saints 112, 126, 143 See also holy men Salvation 62, 78, 83, 100, 119, 141, 142, 146, 162, 195, 197, 198, 200, 208, 242, 244, 249, 257, 263, 268, 269, 271, 275, 277, 290, 291, 295, 300, 301, 330, 347, 348 day of 58 of God 274, 276 Sanctification 192, 194 Sanctity 63, 99, 106, 146, 152, 193, 319 pretence of  332 See also holiness Sanctuary 192, 289, 341 of temple in Jerusalem 97-98, 194, 318, 342 used of soul 100, 319, 340 Sapphire 321, 331, 332 Schisms, schismatics 213, 224 Scourges, types of 183 Scriptures, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Bible (e.g.)  74, 111, 156, 200, 246, 257, 304, 306, 323, 342, 353 as pasture, food 77, 291, 326, 327, 358, 359 explanation of 50, 134, 326 concentration on 104 laments in 36 language and style of 41, 46, 48, 91, 102, 121, 129, 145, 174-175, 176, 180, 237, 244, 257, 263, 268-269, 294, 311, 334, 336 moral teaching, effect of 60-61, 119, 195, 205, 260, 354 of old 220 Old Testament 38, 40, 235, 286 orders of 38 sacraments of 150 song of 276 William’s use of 14, 15, 19, 21

406

Index of Subjects

beauties of 76, 179 better parts of 118 Christian 87, 176 ‘dignities’ of 43, 319 ruled by the Lord 77 speaks of herself e.g.  106-107, 269 tripartite 39, 195 See also blessed, body, death, demons, Devil, dirt, elect, exile, eye, fear, flesh, freedom, grace, Holy Spirit, justice, nature, peace, poverty, reason, Redeemer, sanctuary, sickness, torture Speaker changes of 233 identified or discussed  137, 168, 241, 269, 264, 286-287, 309 Spirit right 136 ruling 136 See also Holy Spirit Spirits, evil 136, 244, 262, 284, 346, 358 See also demons Steps 74, 92, 188 Stone(s) 57, 302, 304, 318-321 coping 365 living 241 precious 132 square 246, 247, 249 tables 58 Study 91, 133 Suffering as punishment or testing 145 deserved  47, 57, 78, 83 shared 160, 351 Suggest, suggestion, prompting 56, 119, 181, 217, 249, 250, 251, 323, 360 Swimming 85, 140 Sword of death 159 of despair 228 of God 183, 185

types of  38, 39, 40, 45, 202, 249, 250 See also conscience, filth, flesh, forgiveness, habit, lapsing, madness, old age, pleasure, prayer, pride, punishment, yoke, youth Singing 37, 44, 59, 116 ‘Singularity’ 181, 279 Skin 201, 243, 244, 245, 331, 332, 333 coloured 243 darkened by heat 358 garments of 245, 359 lacked by God 243 of onion 171 of sheep 38 Slavery master and slave 114 of nations  54, 74, 122, 138, 274, 344, 352, 357 selling into 68, 293, 314, 362 servile mind 47, 56, 71 to vice [vel sim.]  43, 49, 55, 56, 76, 80, 112, 146, 203, 321, 358 Sleep 45, 46, 72, 88, 105, 121, 249 of God 122 Sloth, laziness, lethargy 79, 88, 95, 103, 137, 141, 142, 156, 209, 243, 273, 276, 291, 297, 326, 328 sheath of sloth 11, 35 Smells agreeable 44, 133, 142, 158, 182, 222, 226 disagreeable 140 Solace, consolation, comfort from friends 149 from God, Christ 154, 222, 301, 302, 304 through others suffering 160, 216, 259 through worth of oppressors 123 Soldiers (or knights?) 123 Solitude 42, 168, 181, 278, 279, 358 Soul, passim e.g. 16, 19, 22 as city 42 as runaway and serf 112

407

Index of Subjects

through senses 133, 158, 214 See also flesh, mind, suggest Tent 184, 188, 189, 190, 191 Testimony 156-157 Testing 129, 145 See also suffering Thirst 323, 326, 354 felt by Christ 261, 313 for faith and the like 55, 232 for learning 130 not felt by spirit 153 Thoughts 81, 88, 101, 107, 114, 131, 146, 198, 203, 281 divided 202 earthly, carnal 200, 323, 327 flighty [vel sim.] 57, 70, 278, 331 formation of 57 good 325, 326 inner 88, 340 known to God 308, 310 of God 342 organised by heart 159 Three(s) 37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 92, 112, 151, 167, 178, 183, 202, 289, 320 Threefold interpretation of Bible, passim 14, 15-16, 38, 220, 231, 317 Time 58, 78, 109, 115, 126, 133, 259 our time 223 Torrent 178, 221, 297 of pleasures 327 of vices 184 Torture, torment affecting demons 165 at hands of persecutors 42, 196, 247, 260, 287 hated by soul 170 of one’s own choice 68 of penances 52, 68 See also conscience, fear, hell Touching bodies, dead and alive 44, 53, 158 menstrual discharge 140 Trinity 38, 40, 43, 89, 136 Truth 51, 86, 144, 153, 171, 201, 214, 341 and God  214, 215

types of 334-335 wielded by kings 180 Synagogue 17, 81, 282 and church 38, 111, 169, 178, 216, 232, 233, 282, 331, 340 sons of 169 synagogues 239, 353 Tabernacle  184, 189, 190, 191 of Moses 243 Taste 44, 105, 106, 158 Teachers blind, neglectful [vel sim.] 151, 324, 326, 335, 340, 341, 342, 354, 360, 362 false 343 holy 74, 311, 346, 363 over-severe 336 shortage of 104 study and propagate scripture 205, 276 See also masters, preachers Tears assuage grief 46, 133, 205, 207 bitter-sweet 133 eternal 207 holocaust of 222 of Christ 45, 57, 197, 297 of church 134, 206 of Dunstan 221 of Jeremiah 297, 318 of Jerusalem 46 of penitence 133, 136, 196, 221, 224, 263, 264, 268 of Peter 92 vale of 160, 237 William wishes to rouse 12, 232 William’s own tears 317 See also compunction Temperance 100 Temptation 56, 151, 181, 207, 360, 364 and God 110, 221, 241, 363 by demons, Devil 56, 80, 100, 194, 358 in sleep 45 of despair 203

408

Index of Subjects

Virtue(s) often ancillary 100 and faith  85, 197, 322 and love 299 appearance of 56, 244 boredom with 81 desirable 100 examples of  61 inborn, natural 42, 136, 179, 325 listed 100, 195, 319, 320 look-out place of 63, 198, 322, 337 of ostrich, little 324 overthrown, perish  42, 185, 188 peace of 212 prize for 58, 82 rarity of 51 See also capacity, flowers, glory, grace, habit, harmony, heavenly, love

appearance of 254 spiritual 282 Turning 88, 238 Unbelief, see belief, heathen, infidels Understanding as a faculty 43, 75, 109, 116, 319, 320 earthly 281 William feigns lack of 36 See also intellect Underworld 52, 86 See also hell Unreason 19, 77 See also irrationality Variation of expression 107, 127, 224, 248 Verses  45 Vetus Latina  21, 262, 307 Vice(s), passim and desires 205 and soul  42, 57-58, 63, 82, 101, 164, 170, 185, 200, 201, 306, 337, 341, 360 charm of 250 crucifying 230 giving up 62, 121, 126 images of 45 incentives to 182 instances of 84, 156 modern 179, 180, 181 mortifying 205, 229, 334 of peoples 67, 167 See also filth, lapsing, sea, slavery, torrent Vines 108, 167, 260 Vineyard allegorical  111, 166, 167, 169, 170, 259, 299 at Malmesbury 112 Vintage(rs), allegorical 110, 111, 112, 166, 169, 225 the Vintager 169 Vipers 80, 87

Water reflections in 134, 205 selling 354 shortage of 334 Wealth, see riches Wilderness 41, 346, 347 See also desert Will, see free will Wind 112 Wine 129, 208, 208-209, 210, 261, 310 Winepress 128, 129, 132 Wings 126, 245, 324 of Christ 240, 348 Wisdom 74, 100, 116, 120, 121, 157, 178, 203, 211, 272, 323 heavenly 328 lay 323 of Christ 98-99 of God 155 of the flesh 325 stages of 178 used of Christ 211 used of Solomon 150

409

Index of Subjects

of darkness 49 See also actions, grace World, the (this) (as opposed to heaven)  35, 50, 88, 105, and passim dust of 109, 176 end of 104, 138, 339 foundation of 128, 242 way of  47, 94, 124 Worldly often, see glory, happiness, pleasure, secular Worthiness for church office 153, 156 of opponents  18, 124 to receive miracles 61 Wounds, various kinds of 228, 311 See also love

Wit, of Jews 268 Women 144, 194, 201-202, 225-227, 243, 314, 324, 326, 335-336, 359-360 beauty of 61, 73 periods of 138, 140, 143 soft 201, 243, 258, 336 Wood 101, 332, 333, 354, 355, 360 of Libanus 74 Word, the 145, 146 of God 18, 104, 155, 207, 335, 359 Words, arrangement of 285 expressing the incorporeal 153154, 235 used in varying senses: land 174-175 melt 156 net 119 see 91 sit 41 word play  47, 80, 152, 154, 190, 208, 211, 212, 300, 341 Works  39, 75, 151, 152, 176, 205, 240, 315, 319 and faith 76, 195, 197, 206, 268 dusty 111 evil, perverse 76, 191, 229 good 51, 55, 62, 63, 76, 77, 95, 132, 139, 141, 153, 175, 176, 191, 197, 223, 228, 252, 289, 290, 322, 332, 351

Yoke of Christ 65, 251, 277, 280, 283 of Devil 65 of life 180 of sin 122, 125, 126 of slavery 122 Youth, young men 93, 146, 189, 190, 278-279 charming 332 Christ’s 234 liable to sin 19, 277, 289

410