English 220: Ideas about Reading

Macrobius

BL Harley 2772, fol. 70v; Commentary on the Dream of Scipio

... [Nature’s] sacred rites are veiled in mysterious representations so that she may not have to show herself even to initiates. Only eminent men of superior intelligence gain a revelation of her truths...

St

Augustine

BL Royal 5 B xii, fol. 5r; De doctrina christiana

But the ambiguities of figurative words, which are now to be treated, require no little care and industry. For at the outset you must be very careful lest you take figurative expressions literally.

... hasty and careless readers are led astray by many and manifold obscurities and ambiguities, substituting one meaning for another; and in some places they cannot hit upon even a fair interpretation. Some of the expressions are so obscure as to shroud the meaning in the thickest darkness. And I do not doubt that all this was divinely arranged for the purpose of subduing pride by toil, and of preventing a feeling of satiety in the intellect, which generally holds in small esteem what is discovered without difficulty.

(De doctrina Christiana)

Hugh of St

Victor

BL Egerton 629, fol. 1r; Didascalicon

... it ought to be known that Sacred Scripture has three ways of conveying meaning– namely, history, allegory, and tropology. To be sure, all things in the divine utterance must not be wrenched to an interpretation such that each of them is held to contain history, allegory, and tropology all at once.... Honey is more pleasing because enclosed in the comb, and whatever is sought with greater effort is also found with greater desire…. It is necessary, therefore, so to handle the Sacred Scripture that we do not try to find history everywhere, nor allegory everywhere, nor tropology everywhere, but rather that we assign individual things fittingly in their own places, as reason demands.