Gesammelte Aufsätze zur romanischen Philologie. Erich Auerbach
Christ; it was supported by another even more famous passage: et egredietur virga de radice Jesse, et flos de radice eius ascendet (Is. 11, 1). Later on, there are many puns on the words virgo and virga. Mary is called virgo virga salutaris in a hymn of the twelfth century,33 and St. Bernard designates Christ as virga virgo virgine generatus.34
Seventh stanzaStanze: The porta iugiter serrata belongs to the same group of figures of the conception; it refers to Ezek. 44, 2: porta haec clausa erit, et non aperietur, et vir non transibit per eam; quoniam Dominus Deus Israel ingressus est per eam. We shall discuss this figure later.
Eighth stanza: The mother of the virtues is humilitashumilitas, opposed to superbiasuperbia; Mary’s humility is an important motif in her eulogy (DanteDante: umile … più che creatura), based, in the tradition, on Luke 1, 38ff.; it is opposed to Eve’s superbia (DanteDante, Purgatorio, xxix, 25–27). The words subisti remedium etc. and the following stanza refer to Luke 2, 22–24, cf. Lev. 12, 6–8.35
Eleventh stanzaStanze: the theme of laughter (cui parvus arrisit tunc) is very widespread, but there is some variation concerning the person who is laughing; in a sequence of the twelfth century, to be analysed later (‘Candor surgens ut aurora’), it is Mary’s mother Anne: matris risus te signavit (fourth stanza); in another of the same period, ‘De sancta Maria Aegyptiaca,’36 Christ is called noster risus; Adam de Saint-VictorAdam v. St. Victor, ‘In Resurrtiecone Domini Sequentia’37 designates Christ as
puer nostri forma risus,
pro quo vervex est occisus.
This last quotation explains the meaning: it is again Isaac as figura Christi with an allusion to Isaac’s name and Sarah’s words referring to it: risum fecit mihi Dominus (Gen. 21, 6); it is the joy caused by the birth of the long awaited miraculous child, who may laugh too, and be called noster risus, the gaudium magnum of Luke 2, 10. I am inclined to assume that VergilVergil’s Fourth Eclogue38 has also contributed to this figure; the mediaeval interpretation of VergilVergil’s text as a prophecy of Christ is well known.
Notker’s sequence has no rhymes, its figures of speech are infrequent,39 and they are simple in comparison with what is offered by subsequent texts. The figures of interpretation are not dense enough to veil the facts which they interpret; Mary in her actual story is present in every stanzaStanze, except in stanzas 6 and 7; these are almost entirely figurative, but they still contain the link with Mary’s real life by the formulas Te … praefigurat, Maria and Tu … Maria … esse crederis.
In the sequences of the eleventh century, the progress of the figurative style is evident; there are stanzas and even series of stanzas where the figures completely conceal the story. The following stanza, taken from the sequence ‘In Assumptione Beatae Mariae’40 attributed to Herimannus ContractusHerimannus Contractus:
| str. 2 | Euge Dei porta quae non aperta veritatis lumen ipsum solem iustitiae indutum carne ducis in orbem, |
with its allusions to Ezek. 44, 2, Mal. 4,2, and JohnJohannes (Evangelist) 1, 1–16, is only one in a series of similar paraphrases of Christ’s birth, in which the event disappears, concealed by its symbols; here are two more stanzaStanzes which contain very intricate figurative images:
| str. 6 | Tu agnum regem terrae dominatorem Moabitici de petra deserti ad monteur filiae Sion transduxisti. | str. 7 | Tuque furentem Leviathan serpentem tortuosumque et vectem collidens damnoso crimine mundum exemisti. |
Strophe 6 is based on Is. 16, 1; strophe 7 on Is. 27, 1; there is probably, too, in the figure of Leviathan an allusion to Job 40, 20 and to the current interpretations of these passages;41 these consider Christ’s incarnation as the bait and his divine nature as the hook by which Leviathan, the devil, is captured.42
In the twelfth century, with the full development of rhyme and the growing smoothness of versification, this figurative style reached its perfection; figures of interpretation were fused with figures of speech and sound; both covered sacred history with some sort of rhetorical and mystical embroidery.43 We begin with a eulogy from Adam de Saint-Victor’sAdam v. St. Victor sequence ‘In assumptione Beatae Mariae Virginis’ (‘Gratulemur in hac die’):
| (5) 25 | Virgo sancta, virgo munda, Tibi nostra sit iucunda Vocis modulatio; Nobis opero fer desursum, Et post huius vitae cursum Tuo lunge filio. | (6) 31 | Tu a saeclis praeelecta Litterali diu tecta Fuisti sub cortice. De te Christum genitura Praedixerunt in scriptura Prophetae, sed typice. |
| (7) 37 | Sacramentum patefactum Est dum Verbum caro factum Ex te nasci voluit Quod sua nos pietate A maligni potestate Potenter eripuit. | (10) 55 | De te virga progressuram Florem mundo profuturam Isaïas cecinit, Flore Christum praefigurans Cuius virtus semper durans Nec coepit nec desinit. |
| (8) 43 | Te per thronum Salomonis, Te per vellus Gedeonis Praesignatam credimus, Et per rubum incombustum, Testamentum si vetustum Mystice perpendimus. | (11) 61 | Fontis vitae tu cisterna, Ardens lucens es lucerna; Per te nobis lux superna Suum fudit radium; Ardens igne caritatis, Luce lucens castitatis Lucem summae claritatis Mundo gignens filium. |
| (9) 49 | Super vellus ros descendens Et in rubo flamma spendens (Neutrum tamen laeditur) Fuit Christus carnem sumens, In te tamen non consumens Pudorem, dum gignitur. | (12) 69 | O salutis nostrae porta, nos exaudi, nos conforta…44 |
This is still a comparatively unsophisticated example, for Adam describes the method he follows (vv. 35–36), and several lines (45, 47–48, 57) recall it; there is not a complete fusion between figuring and figured object. Besides the play of the rhyme, the figures of speech and sound are not too striking. Yet the typological allusions need some commentary.
Sixth stanzaStanze: in this general description of the figurative method, the words tu a saeclis praeelecta, which correspond to DanteDante’s termine fisso d’eterno consiglio, allude to passages such as Prov. 8, 23 (ab aeterno ordinata sum), or Cant. 6, 9; the usual formula is: elegit eam Deus, et praeelegit eam; Mary is sometimes considered as finis figurarum, although this designation is usually applied to Christ himself.45
Eighth stanzaStanze: the three images thronus Salomonis, vellus Gedeonis and rubus incombustus are among the most widespread Marian figures; the poet himself explains the meaning of the latter two (vv. 49–54); the pertinent Biblical texts are Judges 6, 36ff. for the vellus Gedeonis and Exod. 3, 2 for the rubus. Mary as thronus Salomonis refers to Solomon as figura Christi; he is the sponsus of the Song of Songs, and his name is interpreted as ‘pacific’; therefore, the ‘true Solomon’ is Christ who is pax nostra (Ephes. 2, 54), and the Virgin is often called thronus, or templum, or domus, or lectus Salomonis. We have, encountered before, in St. Ambrose’sAmbrosius, hl. hymn ‘De Adventu Domini’, the verse: versatur in templo Deus.46
Tenth stanza: the background of v. 55ff. is, of course, Is. 11, 1ff., one of the basic passages of Biblical figuralism.47 Cf. above, p. 131/132.
Eleventh stanzaStanze: Christ as fons vitae refers