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Peter G. EppsPresentation (Nicholas of Lyra)Theological Hermeneutics—Harvey4-31-2003
Nicholas of Lyra: Postilla on the Song of SongsIntroduction to the Man and his Work
As James George Kiecker puts it, “In an age when doctors of the church weregiven distinctive titles, Nicholas of Lyra’s title was the
 Doctor planus et utilis
, ‘the clearand useful doctor.’ It was a fitting sobriquet” (9). In the often confusing welter of medieval interpretations of Scripture, the confusing and conflicting applications of allegorical method to Scripture in pursuit of both theoretical and practical theology, the
Postilla Litteralis
of Nicholas of Lyra stands out as a body of clear, concise exposition of the words of Scripture.Relatively little detail is available on Nicholas of Lyra himself. Kiecker suggeststhat “he was probably born about 1270 in Neuve-Lyre near Evreux on the coast of Normandy” (10). Some have speculated he was partly Jewish; he was clearly influencedby Hebrew thought, particularly that of Rabbi Solomon (known as Rashi), and hadcertainly studied Hebrew at some point. Kiecker reminds us that Evreux was “a center of Jewish biblical exegesis” during Lyra’s lifetime, however, so Hebrew schools wouldcertainly have been readily available to him.Lyra became a friar in the Order of Friars Minor, rapidly advancing to a positionof some prominence and responsibility both as a theologian and as an administrator in theFrench provinces. In pursuit of these responsibilities during the period of reform amongthe Franciscans, Lyra took the part of those “who believed the order should own noproperty (the Spirituals) rather than those who believed the order should (theConventuals)” (10). This dispute appears to have been one of a number of contributors toa change in emphasis for Lyra; as Kiecker points out, he “seems to have resigned fromhis administrative duties in 1330 to devote more time to study” (10).His principal work, probably finished around the time of his resignation fromadministration in 1330, is the
Postilla Litteralis
; it is followed by the
Postilla Moralis
.These two prominent medieval commentaries give respectively the “literal” sense (that is,the proper signification) and the “moral” sense (the allegorical, typological, andtropological significance) of each phrase of the books he commented on. It is especiallyinteresting for purposes of this paper that, as Kiecker notes, Lyra only commented on theSong of Songs once—as, indeed, he does for the Epistles. Kiecker quotes Lyra’ssummary on the moral sense of the Epistles as possibly applying to Song of Songs aswell: “
sensus litteralis est simpliciter moralis propter quod illas pertranseo
(the literalsense is simply the moral sense, so I will skip them)” (12). It remains, however, toconsider in what sense Lyra speaks of the “literal” sense of the Song of Songs.Generally, as Kiecker notes, the term
 postilla
probably comes from the phrase
 post illa verba
, “after these words,” and refers simply to verse-by-verse exposition,whether in the form of a homily or a commentary (12). The
litteralis
of Lyra’s first
 
2
Postilla
refers to the exposition of what is in the text itself, that is, what the Holy Spiritdictated to the human amanuensis (Lyra, like other medieval exegetes, adhered to adictation theory of Biblical inspiration). Hence, for Lyra, the question of “what is theliteral sense” is better asked in terms of the Spirit’s authorial intent: “what is the simplestthing the Spirit could have intended to signify by these words?” This formulation of thequestion becomes very important when we consider the historically problematic Song of Songs directly, but it is equally important for the contrast it provides to the practices of many medieval exegetes, as criticized by Franciscan and humanist reformers andProtestants alike. As Mary Dove says, Lyra’s comment on “the holy-spirit-inspiredsignificance in the literal sense” is worth noting:Just as a building which begins to part company with its foundations isinclined to collapse, so a mystical exposition which deviates from theliteral sense must be considered unseemly and inappropriate, or at any rateless seemly and less appropriate, than other interpretations. So those whowish to make headway in the study of Holy Scripture must begin byunderstanding the literal sense. (129)While this metaphor of Lyra’s may seem like a commonplace to modern Protestants, it isprecisely for that reason—and for the criticism it implies of much other exegesis Lyramust have read—that the statement is important. When the implications of the phrase“understanding the literal sense” are taken into account, it becomes clear that a wholehost of textual and literary concerns are included before one can even begin to erect the“building” upon this “foundation.”Lyra’s
Postilla on the Song of Songs
is, thus far, the only one of his
Postilla
 translated into English, the translation by Kiecker being the only one available. Kieckeris to be praised for a very clear and readable and, so far as my Latin extends, still quiteliteral translation. Of course, one would hope for a “clear and useful” translation of the
 Doctor planus et utilis
. It is to be hoped that more translations will follow, as ourclassicist and medievalist brethren in the academy have time to do this great service totheir literary and theological comrades. As the first commentary ever to be printed(Kiecker 12), the
Postilla
deserve considerable attention from scholars of church history,history of ideas, and hermeneutics in the Christian tradition.
Brief Overview of 
 Postilla Litteralis
on the Song of Songs
 First, of course, any examination of the Song of Songs must account for theproblematic history of the book. As Lyra notes, both Hebrew and Christian scholars havestruggled with the meaning and canonicity of this book which, taking the most naïvereading, is a marriage-poem (or
epithalamion
, a tradition joined by Edmund Spenser,among others, in English-language poetry) which expresses in both stylized figures(generally drawing on conventional metaphors and juxtaposing highly formalized, evenmanneristic diction and imagery with intimate content) and frankly erotic language thelove between a newly married couple. Attempting to clarify the problem at the outset,Nicholas says,This whole book is in the form of a parable. However, it is not clear towhom the points of the parable should be applied in order to arrive at theliteral sense, and this makes it difficult to interpret the book. . . . [T]hemeaning of the text is not clear except in a certain general way. The Song
 
3is a parable which speaks about the love between a bridegroom and hisbride. But the text does not clearly indicate who this groom and bridemight be. (29)Lyra’s use of “parable” here has the sense of tropes, of figurative language which existswithin the literal sense of a text, and whose figurative structure functions as part of theproper signification of the text.His contention, then, is that all of the language of the book is one large trope, thetrope of the love-poem, which must be expanded into a literal sense in much the manner ametaphoric usage within an expository sentence must be so expanded. This sense of “parable” can be illustrated by the appearance of such conventional metaphors as“mountain-moving faith” in Christ’s teaching in the Gospels, later used in Paul’s epistleto the Corinthians: the expansion (automatically, and generally un-self-consciously,made by most readers) from “though I have all faith, so that I could move mountains . . .and have not love, I am nothing” into a thoroughly “literal” discourse involves (amongother moves) the translation of “all faith, so that I could move mountains” into somethingsuch as “faith whose scope includes even the most unusual, unlikely, or humanlyimpossible outcomes as divinely possible.” Lyra’s parabolic reading treats the entirebook as if it is a trope included within some tacit expository frame, just as the “mountain-moving faith” metaphor is included within the explicit expository frame of Paul’sdiscourse. The logical question, then, is what expository framing statement the readerought to supply to understand the “literal sense” of the “parable”; that is, in Lyra’s words,“who the groom and bride might be” (29).Lyra resists the reading that the “points of the parable” should be applied to theobvious characters of the story, Solomon and his bride, on the traditional grounds that theSpirit’s intended significance of the passage would not be about sexual love because “itwould be fleshly and often such a love has a certain dishonorable and improper qualityabout it” (29). However problematic this objection to the Spirit’s involvement with frank sexuality may be for modern interpreters, it is remarkably moderately stated in Lyra;more interesting is the fact that Lyra proceeds to give another reason, perhaps morecompelling:Besides this, Solomon loved his wife and she loved him, and he learnedthe delights of this love by experience, not by the revelation of the HolySpirit. Therefore, this book, which has always been included among thecanonical books by the Hebrews and the Latin [translators]—as is clearfrom Jerome’s defense in his
Prologue
—does not seem to be about such ahuman love. (31)Thus, Lyra comes to the somewhat surprising conclusion that the literal sense of the Songof Songs is “
not 
that which is signified by the words, but that which is signified by thethings signified by the words” (31).Using this hermeneutical tool, Nicholas corrects both Hebrew and Latininterpreters who take the Song as referring to the love between God and Israel, orbetween God and the Church of Rome, preferring to describe the book as dealing with the“love which exists between God and the rational creature” (29), specifically “the Church,embracing the circumstances of both Testaments” (33). The believing rational creature,then, whether pre-Christian or Christian, is the proper object of all the signs in the Song
of 00

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