716 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
The visitor in Florence to-day finds two invisible personalities meeting him cvuiy where, Dante, whom the city banished, and Savonarola, whom it executed. The spirit of tlie executioner has vanished and the mention of Savonarola's name strikes in all Florentines a tender chord of admiration and love. In 1882, the signory placed his statue in the Hall of the Five Hundred. There, a few yards from the place of his execution, he stands in his Dominican habit and cowl, with his left hand resting on a lion's head and holding aloft in his right hand a crucifix, wliile his clear eye is turned upwards. Again, on May 22, li)01, the city honored the friar by setting a circular bronze tablet with portrait on the spot where he suffered death. A great multitude attended the dedication and one of the wreaths of flowers bore the name of the Dominicans.
In Savonarola's cell in St. Mark's has been placed a medallion head of the friar, and still another on the cloistral wall over the spot where he was seized and made prisoner, and the visitor will often find there a fresh wreath of flowers, a proof of the undying memory of the Florentine preacher and patriot.
This was he, Savonarola, — the star-look shooting from the cowl.
— Browning, Casa Guido Windows.
§ 77. The Study and Circulation of the Bible.
The only biblical commentary of the Middle Ages, conforming in any^ adequate sense to our modern ideas of exegesis, was produced by Nicolasjjf Lyra, who died 134(1. The exegesis of the Schoolmen was a subversion of Scripture rather than an exposition. In tireir hands, it was made the slave of dogma. Of grammatical and textual criticism they had no conception and they lacked all equipment for the grammatical study of the original Hebrew and Greek. What commentaries were produced in the flourishing era of Scholasticism, were either^collections of quotations from the Fathers, called Chains,^_^— catence, the most noted of which was the catena on the Gospels by Thomas Aquinas, — <>r, if original works, they teemed with endless suggestions of the fancy and were like continents of tropical vine-growths
§ 77. STUDY AND CIRCULATION OF THE BIBLE. 717
through which it is next to impossible to find a clear path to Jesus Christ and the meaning of human life. The bulky expositions of the Psalms, Job and other biblical books by such theologians as Rupert of Deutz, Bonaventura and Albertus Magnus, are to-day intellectual curiosities or, at best, manuals from which piety of the conventual type may be fed. They bring out every other meaning but the historical and plain sense intended by the biblical authors. Especially true is this of the Song of Songs, which the Schoolmen made a hunting-ground for descriptions of the Virgin Mary.^ It is said, Thomas Aquinas was engaged on the exposition of this book when he died.
The traditional mediseyal fornmla of interpretation reduced Tychonius' seven senses to four, — the literal, allegorical, moral „and..anagogicalk The formula ran : —
'o , y & Litteralis gesta docet ; quid credos, allegoria, Moralis quid agas ; quo tendas anagogia.
Thomas Aquinas, fully in accord with this method, said that " the literal sense of Scripture is manifold, its spiritual sense, threefold, viz., allegorical, moral and anagogical."^ The literal sense teaches the things which have happened, the allegorical what we are to believe, the moral what we are to do and the anagogical directs to things to be awaited. The last three senses correspond to faith, hope and charity. Hugo of Cher compared them to the four coverings of the tabernacle, the four winds, the four wings of the cherubim, the four rivers of paradise, the four legs of the Lord's table. Here are specimens: Jerusalem, literally, is a city in Palestine; allegorically,it is the Church; morally, the faithful soul; anagogically, the heavenly Jerusalem. The Exodus from Egypt is, historically, a fact; allegorically, the redemption of Christ; morally, the soul's conversion; anagogically, the departure for the heavenly land. In his earliest years. Dean Colet followed this method. From Savonarola we would expect it. The literal heaven, earth and light of Genesis 1:1,2, he expounded
1 So sober a writer as Reuss, p. 607, speaks of the commentaries on tlie Canticles, as being witliout number.
2 Summa, I. 1 art. x.