Commentary on the Song of Songs (Commentarium in Canticum Canticorum)

Verse 1. Upon my bed, through the nights, I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and found him not. Verse 2. I will rise, and go about the city: through the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and found him not. Verse 3. The watchmen who keep the city found me: Have you seen him whom my soul loveth? Verse 4. When I had a little passed by them, I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and I will not let him go, till I bring him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that bore me.

I will rise, and go about (the Arabic: I will range through) the city: through the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and found him not (the Arabic adds: I called him, and he did not answer me). The watchmen who keep (the Syriac: who went about) the city found me (the Arabic adds: and I said): Have you seen him whom my soul loveth? (the Syriac: have you seen the essence of the love which my soul loveth?). When I had a little passed by them, I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and I will not let him go, till I bring him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that bore me. The Arabic: of her who conceived me.

The connection here is difficult — namely, by what reasoning these things are joined to what precedes, so that the fitness of the drama may be preserved. First, our Sanchez: In the first chapter, he says, the sacred writer clearly described the bride's desire, by which she was borne toward her absent bridegroom; in the second, he took up the bridegroom's caresses and offices toward his beloved; in the third, he now draws nearer to the wedding; for he brings the spouses together in the chariot, in which, as was the custom, they were led home with applause and music. For among the Hebrews the bridegroom did not go to the bride except after her being led across into the bridegroom's house. The sense of this verse, then, is as if she said: I grieved that my bridegroom was absent from the bed, because he could not be in it except once the rites of the wedding had been performed. Or: I desired to have a companion of the bed, that is, to enter into marriage, because before that she did not hope that she would ever, in the night hours, have with her the one she loved. In this view Bernard, sermon 75, says that the bride, being in the bed, sought the bridegroom — not indeed one lying in the bed, but that, as she desired him in his absence, she deliberated within herself about seeking him out. And this explanation agrees very well with the translation of the Septuagint, who render it ἐπὶ κοίτην, that is, "unto the bed" — as if to say, I longed for the bed, or for the marriage union. Thus Sanchez.

Second, Genebrard holds that this is a new drama here, or rather a new — namely, second — act of the drama; and so no connection is to be sought here, because what is narrated here took place at another time, namely by night, whereas the rest took place by day. Better, Gislerius holds that this is indeed a new act here, and a new narration, but one connected with what precedes: for the bride, after the bridegroom's departure, narrates what she once did, when she noticed that her beloved had gone away from her — with what eagerness she sought him, how she came upon him and held him fast, lest he go away again.

Third, John the Carmelite holds that these words of the bride are brought forth so as to give the reason why the bridegroom said to her, chapter 2, verse 10: "Arise, make haste, my love"; namely because he found her lying, or idle, in bed; hence he calls her forth, saying: "Arise, make haste."

Fourth, Abbot Gilbert, who continued St. Bernard's Sermons on the Canticle and begins here, connects it thus, sermon 1: "From the mountains," he says, "he had swiftly betaken himself to the bride's bed, where she, roused and failing from the abundance of delight, fell asleep exhausted amid the embraces of her beloved. Delighted, she fell into a sweet sleep, but on waking this woman of delights did not find him in her hands. Passing over in silence, then, those joys, those ineffable joys, she nevertheless broke out into this utterance: Upon my bed, through the nights, I sought him whom my soul loveth."

Fifth, more fittingly, Luysius of León holds that the bride, having swooned from love, fell into sleep, and while asleep, or half-asleep, said to her young companions: "The voice of my beloved," and so on, the things that are narrated from chapter 2, verse 8, to the end of the chapter; but now, he says, the bride, freed from sleep and awakened, is said — having imagined that the bridegroom, in whatever way he seemed to speak to her in her rest, was lying with her — to have sought him, and, not having found him, to have leapt from the bed, and, having gone out from the house, to have gone about seeking him through all the places of the city. In this Solomon is to be understood as having set down, not what actually happened, but what the nature of the matter under discussion required to be done, set forth in a manner suited to the thing itself. And so, because he understood that either propriety would be neglected by him, or a good part of this song would have to be left out, he therefore took up a character from the midst of common life, and brought in a woman raised in the country, so that, propriety being kept, he might express in her the whole force of love. Wherefore the bride, roused by the stings partly of love, partly of fear (lest some evil befall her absent bridegroom by night), could not command herself to remain at home until it grew light; but she leapt up at once, neither deterred by the darkness, nor fearing the chances of the night, nor having any regard for herself, and following love alone as her guide, she sought out her husband. For that the marriage had already been entered into beforehand by the bridegroom with the bride, and that the bridegroom had gone in to the bride, is sufficiently clear from what precedes, especially from chapter 1, verse 3, where the bride says: "The king brought me into his storerooms"; and verse 11: "While the king was at his repose, my spikenard gave forth its odor"; and chapter 2, verse 4: "The king brought me into the wine cellar, he set charity in order in me," etc.

On the other hand, Aben Ezra holds that the bride here narrates the things she was seeing while dreaming, and he proves this from the fact that she herself says: "Upon my bed, through the nights, I sought him whom my soul loveth"; for it is at night that one sleeps and dreams — for who would seek one whom he knows to be present with him, or absent, in bed? — and from the fact that, in verse 5, the bridegroom charges that no one wake her from sleep; the bride, then, was already asleep and dreaming, which indeed is probable, especially on account of the verse 5 already mentioned. If one is pleased to follow this, one should say that this is a new dream of the bride's, partly like the former one, partly unlike it, in which, namely, the bride dreams that she anxiously sought her beloved through the streets and the broad ways, and at length, after long wanderings, found him, and, having found him, held him fast and did not let him go. For the things which one loves and greatly desires, one dreams of these often and in various ways. Hence lovers also fashion dreams for themselves, and the desires of lovers are the dreams of the waking. Hence St. Anselm notes that it is no wonder that the bride sleeps in bed and at the same time ascends, like a little column of smoke; for the more she is drawn away from earthly things, and as it were falls asleep to them, the higher she is raised up toward the things of heaven.

First Sense, the Adequate One: Concerning Christ and the Church.

First, the Chaldee expounds these things of the Jews, who, in worshipping the golden calf, lost the grace and holiness of God; for thus it says: "And when the people of the Lord Israel saw that the clouds of glory had been taken away from them, and that the crown of holiness which had been given to it at Sinai had been taken away from them, they remained darkened like the night, and they sought the crown of holiness which had been taken away from them, and did not find it."

Second, Titelmann and others take these things of the condition of the old Synagogue, or more generally of the condition of human nature before the coming of Christ, and then of the new Church after his coming. For mankind before Christ, wretched from the fall of Adam, and lying in the bed of its own weakness, sluggish and sick toward every good — and this in the night of unbelief and ignorance — sought in the law of nature, from its own sages, sophists, and philosophers, a remedy for so great an evil, namely the highest good, or that in which man's happiness was situated, and the way of arriving at it; but it drew nothing solid or true from them, inasmuch as they trusted in the blind ingenuity of their own minds, when it ought rather to have gone out from its own bed and passed over to the light of divine grace, without which the bridegroom is sought in vain and is not found — he who alone blesses the soul that seeks and loves him: so too the synagogue lay sluggish and sick in the bed of the Mosaic law, and in the night of shadows, that is, of figurative ceremonies, and sought the bridegroom through the streets and the broad ways, when, trusting in the letter of the law, and looking to the merits and examples of the fathers Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc., it strove, through lustral ceremonies and the sacrifices of animals and those shadowy judgments, to justify itself and to merit God. But not finding him there, it went to the watchmen of the city, namely the scribes and Pharisees, and inquired of him from them; but it got no fitting answer from them. After, then, scorning their vain traditions, and repudiating their false doctrine, it turned its ears and mind to the new doctrine of evangelical grace coming down from heaven with Christ, at last the Synagogue found him whom it had so greatly sought and had awaited for so many ages, its own beloved, the true Savior of the world, promised to the fathers from the beginning, and prefigured by the various riddles of the ceremonies: him whom, up to then, it had itself sought, though covertly, through its typical sacrifices and ceremonial observances, all of which looked to Christ the Savior of the world as to the end of the whole law, according to what the Apostle says, that Christ is the end of the law "unto justice to everyone that believeth," Rom. 10:4.

But because this Canticle is a marriage-song, not of the Synagogue and Moses, nor of the condition of the law of nature and of God, but of Christ and the Church, as St. Jerome, Cassiodorus, Bede, Origen, Theodoret, and the rest everywhere teach; hence these things are to be expounded of Christ and the Church. Now, because, as I said in the Proem on the Canticle, the rise, the progress, and the perfection of the Church are described, and the rise, or the infancy, of the Church is described from chapter 1, verse 1, to chapter 2, verse 8; and from there on to chapter 3, verse 6, the progress of the Church, or its adolescence, is described; it follows likewise that these things, which are contained from chapter 3, verse 1 and following, to verse 6, are to be referred to that same adolescence, and that it comes to an end here.

Now the infancy of the Church was from the rise of Christ to his ascension into heaven and the sending of the Holy Spirit, which comprises the deeds of Christ from his birth to his death, resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost; but from there begins the adolescence and the spreading abroad of the Church, which the apostles brought about by preaching. Wherefore the infancy of the Church is described in the Gospels, but its adolescence in the Acts of the Apostles.

The bed here, then, of the bride, that is, of the primitive Church, was her rest, in which, after Christ's ascension into heaven, she rested with the Blessed Virgin and the apostles in Sion until Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit, and after that she rested in Sion and Judea for a number of years, during which the apostles preached to the Jews alone (Baronius counts ten years, but I count only four, as I have shown, Acts 12:1); indeed she thought that she would rest there forever with her bridegroom Christ; but there she did not find Christ, because few of the Jews embraced the faith, while the rest, together with the scribes and the chief priests, despised Christ and the Church, and indeed persecuted them. Wherefore the Church — namely St. Peter and the apostles, taught by Christ — undertook the laborious journey and the burden of evangelizing through all the nations, and there found Christ in the faith, religion, and obedience of all the nations, as is clear from the Acts of the Apostles and from Church History. The connection of the Canticle, then, and its exposition, is to be sought from the course of Christ and the Church, which is described in the Gospels, the Acts, and Church History.

The sense, then, is as if she said: I, the Church, resting sweetly in Sion and Judea, and there giving myself to prayer, to the word of God, and to frequent communion, to holiness and to every Christian virtue and perfection, as is clear, Acts 1:13 and following, there I sought Christ, but did not find him, because most of the Jews, clinging to the Mosaic law, rejected the faith of Christ; but Christ resides and is found in the Church, and in the multitude and totality of the believers of the whole world. For the bride knows that Christ dwells through faith in the hearts of the faithful, as St. Bernard notes. I said, then: "I will rise, and go about the city" of Jerusalem, and I will leave Judea subject to it; through "the streets and the broad ways," by preaching the gospel, "I will seek him whom my soul loveth," namely Christ, and the faith and worship of Christ: "I sought him, and found him not," because the Jews resisted Christ and the gospel.

"The watchmen who keep the city found me," namely the high priests, the princes of the priests, the scribes, Herod Agrippa, and the other rulers of Judea; I asked them: "Have you seen him whom my soul loveth?" Do you acknowledge the Messiah promised to your fathers? Do you believe in Jesus Christ crucified? But they fell silent, and by their silence testified that they did not know Christ. Wherefore, "when I had a little passed by them, I found him whom my soul loveth," namely when, after the persecution by the high priests and the killing of St. Stephen, in the second year after Christ's passion, Christ converted St. Paul and appointed him teacher of the nations, saying: "This man is a vessel of election to me, to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings," Acts 9:15. And when, Acts 10:11, he showed St. Peter the vessel sent down from heaven, teaching that not only the Jews but also the Gentiles were to be called to Christ and the Church, and therefore commanded St. Peter to convert Cornelius the centurion, as the firstfruits of the Gentiles, and to join him to Christ. Whence a little after, namely in the year of Christ 37, which was the fourth from his passion and resurrection, the apostles, having divided the provinces of the nations among themselves, each one setting out to his own, likewise converted it and joined it to Christ. There, then, in the faith of the nations, the apostles found Christ, as it were residing and reigning in the universal Church. Then, therefore, the Church said: "I held him, and I will not let him go," because I will found churches everywhere among the nations, and so I will establish them firmly in the faith of Christ by means of priests, deacons, bishops, sacraments, teachers, preachers, miracles, etc., so that they may never cast him off, but, whether all together, or in turn and in succession, may hold him fast, so that always a great part of the world may worship and adore Christ: "till I bring him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that bore me," that is, of the Synagogue. For the old Synagogue of the Jews was the mother, and the one who bore, the Church of the Christians. For the first Christians, namely the apostles, sprang from the Jews. The sense, then, is as if she said: I will transfer the faith and worship of Christ from the Jews to the nations, and there I will confirm and establish him, until, at the end of the world, through Elijah and Enoch, I convert the Jews: for thus I will "bring" Christ, and the faith of Christ, "into my mother's house," that is, into the Synagogue of the Jews, so that all Israel may be saved, and that from Jews and Gentiles there may be made one fold and one shepherd. This is what the Apostle says: "Blindness in part has happened in Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in, and so all Israel should be saved, as it is written: There shall come out of Sion he who shall snatch away and turn away ungodliness from Jacob," that is, from the Jews sprung from Jacob, Rom. 11:25. Thus St. Gregory: "He will bring the beloved," he says, "into the mother's house, when at the end of the world the Church, through preaching, will send Christian sacraments into the Jewish people; but into the chamber, as it were into the more secret part of the house, he will bring him, because from that same people he will convert so many that they will cast off all the burdens of the world, and in their inmost thoughts will desire to please God alone. Men of this sort will make a chamber for the bridegroom, because, while they cast off from themselves all the filth of covetousness, they will arrange, as it were, a secret place in the mind, in which he may take delight." So too Cassiodorus, Bede, Aponius, Philo of Carpasia, Justus of Urgel, St. Anselm, Rupert, St. Bernard, and the rest everywhere, who in the same manner as St. Gregory expound this fourth verse: "till I bring him," etc. Whence you may gather that the preceding three verses also are to be expounded in the same manner in which I have expounded them. For this the very sequence and connection of the history requires.

Note that where the bride says she sought Christ the bridegroom "through the nights," understand "through the darknesses" — namely since darkness of unbelief and of ignorance of God, of Christ, and of salvation occupied Jerusalem and Judea, and the whole world. Hear St. Bernard, sermon 75: "This world has its nights, and not a few. Why do I say that the world has nights, when almost the whole of it is night, and it is always wholly turned in darkness? Night is Jewish faithlessness, night is the ignorance of the pagans, night is heretical wickedness, night too is the carnal or animal way of life even of Catholics. Is it not night, where the things that are of the Spirit of God are not heeded? And among heretics or schismatics too: as many sects, so many nights. In vain, through these nights, do you seek the sun of justice and the light of truth, that is, the bridegroom, because there is no fellowship of light with darkness."

Mystically, the bed of Christ was the womb of the Blessed Virgin, likewise the manger, and the tomb, where St. Mary Magdalene and her companions, as well as SS. Peter and John, sought Christ and did not find him, because he had already risen from it. Hear St. Bernard, sermon 3: "Is not the tomb a bed? Is not the manger a bed? Is not the virgin's womb a bed? etc. Rightly, then, does the bride, naming the bed, call it her own; because everything that is weak in God is manifestly not from what is his own, but from what is ours. From us he took up what he endured for us — to be born, to be nursed, to die, to be buried. Mine is the mortality of the one born, mine the weakness of the little one, mine the expiring of the crucified, mine the sleep of the buried. The things that were before have passed away, and behold, all things are new. Upon my bed I sought, through the nights, him whom my soul loveth. What? Were you seeking him in your bed, who had already withdrawn into his own? Had you not seen the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? Already he has exchanged heaven for the tomb, and for the stable, and do you still seek him in your bed? He has risen, he is not here. Why do you seek in a bed the strong one, in a bed the great one, made glorious in the stable? He has entered into the powers of the Lord, he has put on comeliness and strength; and behold, he who lay beneath the stone now sits above the cherubim." And, several things being inserted, toward the end of the sermon, pressing on "I will rise, and go about": "Why would she not rise," he says, "once she knew of the resurrection of the beloved? Moreover, O blessed one, if you have risen together with Christ, you must be wise as to the things that are above; you must seek Christ not below, but above, where he sits at the right hand of the Father."

"Locicila is called a city on account of the gathering, a bride on account of love, sheep on account of gentleness." Whence he concludes, and gives this admonition to the pastors of the Church: "Therefore take heed to yourselves, whoever have been allotted this work of ministry; take heed, I say, to yourselves and to the precious deposit which has been entrusted to you. It is a city — watch for its guarding and its harmony. It is a bride — be zealous for her adornment. They are sheep — attend to their pasture. And these three things, perhaps not unfittingly, will be said to pertain to that threefold questioning of the Lord: Peter, lovest thou me? Feed my sheep," John 21:17.

Second Sense, the Partial One: Concerning Christ and the holy soul.

First, the sinful soul seeks God, that is, its highest good and happiness, in a bed, that is, in the pleasures of the flesh, through the nights of ignorance and the darkness of sin; for the miser's bed is gold; the proud man's, honor; the glutton's, delicacies; the slothful man's, idleness — according to that word, Proverbs 26:14: "As the door turneth upon its hinges, so doth the sluggard upon his bed." These seek him in the night, which is caused by the setting-forth of earth, that is, of earthly desires, which they court, and which throw themselves between them and God, and set up obstacles, so that they cannot drink in his light. Wherefore these do not find God, both because they seek in darkness, and because there is no place or rest for God there: so Cassiodorus, Philo of Carpasia, Bede, and others. Wherefore the sinful soul — but repentant, like St. Mary Magdalene (whose action is here portrayed to the life, whence also the Church reads this in place of the Epistle on the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene) — rises from this bed of pleasure and concupiscence, and goes about the streets and the broad ways, anxiously seeking Christ, whom at last she finds in the house of Simon, that is, of obedience, reclining at table at the time of the meal, so that he may feed the guests and the strangers with his divine words. There, then, Magdalene, from behind, washing Christ's feet with her tears, wiping them with her hair, kissing them with her mouth, anointing them with her hands, received pardon, grace, and salvation from Christ.

In like manner the holy soul seeks Christ in its own bed: first, when it seeks him in its own comfort; but there it does not find him, because Christ is found only in the cross, as St. Martin used to say. Thus Cassiodorus: "I will rise," he says, "from the bed of the body and of carnal delight, and I will go about the city of this world, traversing seas and lands: through the streets and the broad ways I will seek, etc., that is, I will look upon those walking the broad roads of this age, and those given over to their own pleasures, to see if perhaps I may find in them the footsteps of my beloved."

Second, when it seeks him in its own will; but there it does not find him, because Christ did not come to do his own will, but the Father's; whence in the garden, with his passion at hand, he prayed: "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done," Luke 22:42. Let him, then, who desires to find God and the grace of God, put off his own will, and put on the divine will, made known to him either by God, or by a superior, who is God's vicar and interpreter.

Third, when it seeks him in curiosity, curiously going about and surveying all the sects, arts, states, pursuits, and exercises of men: but there it does not find him, because this going-about makes a man wandering, unstable, and a rover. Whence St. Justin the philosopher, in his Dialogue against Trypho, relates that he had gone about all the schools of the philosophers, namely of Plato, Aristotle, Democritus, Epicurus, the Stoics, etc., and had nowhere found wisdom, but, warned by a grave man who unexpectedly appeared to him to read the prophets, and by reading them again and again, found what he was seeking: whence, converted to Christ, he became a glorious teacher and martyr. So today, those who change their states, offices, and exercises of piety and virtue, trying now one thing, now another, gain nothing, but consume their time in wandering. For nothing is so contrary to progress as the frequent changing of exercises, as Cassian, Climacus, Dorotheus, and the other masters of spiritual matters teach.

Fourth, whoever seeks him in his own peace, leisure, and tranquility, while God calls him to war, to business, to labors to be undertaken for the salvation of souls, does not find God in that; because God gives each his own light and grace in the state to which he calls him, not in another: whence to those whom he calls to the lot of Magdalene, he appears in solitude and contemplation; to those whom he calls to the lot of Martha, he appears in action, each in that which is proper and peculiar to him, to which he destines him. Hence Theodoret teaches that God is not found in the bed of prosperity, since God sends us adversities so that by them he may exercise and increase our patience and virtue. Hear St. Ambrose, book On Isaac, chapter 5: "There are many who seek Christ in leisure and do not find him, and seek him in persecutions and quickly find him, and this as it were after trials, because he is present in the dangers of his faithful ones. How short a while," he says, "it was, when I had passed by them, and I found him!"

Fifth, God from time to time withdraws his presence, and his illuminating grace and consolation, from the holy and fervent soul, so as to sharpen its desire and kindle its fervor the more. Thus St. Gregory, Morals, book 5, chapter 4: "The bridegroom hides himself," he says, "when he is sought, so that, not being found, he may be sought the more ardently; and the seeking bride is put off, lest she find him, so that, made more capacious by her delay, she may at length find more abundantly what she was seeking." For, as St. Bernard says, sermon 84: "To seek God is a great good; I reckon it second to none among the goods of the soul: it is first among the gifts, last among the attainments. It yields to no virtue, gives way to none. To what should it yield, when none precedes it? To what should it give way, when it is the consummation of all things more than any other? For what virtue could be ascribed to one who does not seek God, or what is the limit of seeking God? Seek, it says, his face evermore, Psalm 104:4. I reckon that not even when he has been found will there be a ceasing from seeking. God is sought not with the steps of the feet, but with desires. And in truth a happy finding does not extinguish holy desire, but extends it." The same author, in the same place, teaches that the soul cannot seek God unless it has been anticipated by his grace: "because God first loved us," 1 John 4:10. "Not at all," he says, "unless loved first." Whence St. Augustine, on Psalm 69: "Seek," he says, "him who first sought you, and carried you back upon his shoulders," as it were a wandering and lost sheep.

Again St. Gregory, homily 25 on the Gospels: "We seek the beloved," he says, "in bed, when in some small rest of the present life we sigh with desire for our Redeemer. We seek him through the night, because although the mind is already awake in him, yet the eye still grows dim. But he who does not find his beloved must then rise, and go about the city, that is, run through the holy Church of the elect with mind and inquiry; let him seek him through the streets and the broad ways, that is, let him look upon those walking through the narrow and the broad paths, so that, if he is able to find any traces of him in them, he may search them out; for there are some, even of the secular life, who have something worth imitating in their conduct of virtue. But those who are seeking find us, who guard the city: because the holy Fathers, who guard the state of the Church, meet our good endeavors, so as to teach us either by word or by writing. When we have passed by them a little, we find him whom we love; because our Redeemer, though in humility a man among men, was yet in his divinity above men. When, then, the watchmen are passed by, the beloved is found; because we behold the prophets and the apostles as beneath him, and we consider him who is God by nature to be above men." Then he adds the reason why Christ wishes to be sought: "He who is not to be found is sought first, so that afterward, once found, he may be held the more closely. For holy desires, as we have said before, grow by delay. But if they fail through delay, they were not desires. This is the love that burned in whoever was able to attain to the truth. Hence David says: My soul hath thirsted for God, the living fountain: when shall I come and appear before the face of God?" Ps. 41:3.

Further, St. Bernard, who wrote ten sermons on these words — indeed in them he concludes and ends his sermons on the Canticle — teaches, first, that the soul seeks God for seven reasons; for thus he says, sermon 85: "The soul seeks the Word, to whom it may consent for correction, by whom it may be illumined unto knowledge, on whom it may lean for virtue, by whom it may be reformed unto wisdom, to whom it may be conformed for comeliness, to whom it may be wedded for fruitfulness, in whom it may delight for gladness." Second, sermon 86, he teaches that the soul ought to seek God modestly, cautiously, and secretly, namely in the secrecy of the bed and of the night. For since "nocturnal sleep brings in silence, then prayer will be plainly freer and purer." St. Bernard adds that God is sought in the bed of infirmity, so that he may heal it in the nights, according to that word: "May the Lord bring him help upon the bed of his sorrow: thou hast turned all his couch in his sickness," Psalm 40:4. And in the night of ignorance, that he may dispel it with his light: "And if it is pleasing to perceive," he says, "that by the name of the bed human weakness is figured, and by the darkness of night, likewise, human ignorance, it follows, and is fitting enough, that the power of God, and the Word who is the wisdom of God, should be sought the more urgently against each original evil. For surely what is more fitting, than that virtue should be set against weakness, wisdom against ignorance." Again St. Ambrose, sermon 7 on Psalm 118: "She sought," he says, "in the nights, that is, in persecutions and adversities. For it is night to all those for whom there is no perfect security."

Finally, the soul seeking God already in some way finds him — indeed also has and holds him: for it would not seek him, unless it knew, desired, and loved him. It finds him, then, through faith and hope; it seeks, that it may possess him through charity; it finds him absent through desire, that it may hold him present through joy; it finds and holds him through patience, that it may possess him through consolation; it holds him through the beginning of pious affection, that it may possess and hold him through its own advancement and perfection; it holds him through love, it seeks, that it may possess him through fervor. Whence St. Bernard, treatise On Loving God: "Thou art good, O Lord," he says, "to one who seeks thee; what, then, to one who finds thee? But indeed this is a marvel, that no one is able to seek thee, unless he has first found thee: thou dost wish, then, to be found so that thou mayest be sought; to be sought, so that thou mayest be found." Therefore God is sought through the beginning of faith, hope, repentance, patience, and the other virtues; he is found through the increase of those same virtues, especially of love and charity, as Richard of St. Victor teaches, according to that word: "They shall go from virtue to virtue; the God of gods shall be seen in Sion," Psalm 83:8.

St. Augustine, on Psalm 104, at those words: "Seek the Lord, and be strengthened: seek his face evermore." "God," he says, "is to be sought without end, because he is to be loved without end." And a little before: "But if he is always sought, when is he found? Or did I say 'always' with respect to this whole life which is lived here, from the time we came to know that we ought to do this — even when he has been found, is he still to be sought? For indeed faith already finds him, but hope still seeks him; but charity both finds him through faith, and seeks to have him through sight: where he will then be found in such a way as to suffice for us, and to be sought no further."

The same St. Ambrose treats this more fully, book 3, On Virgins: "If you too," he says, "wish to hold Christ, seek him continually, and without fearing punishment: for Christ is more often found better amid the very torments of the body, amid the very hands of persecutors. How short a while it was," he says, "when I had passed by from them, until I found him! For in a small space and a brief moment, when you have escaped the hands of persecutors, and have not succumbed to the powers of the world, Christ meets you, and does not allow you to be tried for long."

Frequent repetition has greatly benefited progress.

VERSE 2. I WILL RISE, AND GO ABOUT THE CITY: THROUGH THE STREETS AND THE BROAD WAYS I WILL SEEK HIM WHOM MY SOUL LOVES: I SOUGHT HIM, AND FOUND HIM NOT.

For vicos, the Hebrew is שוקים scheuakim, plural, whose singular is שוק schok, that is, the shin, or the foot, which runs from the hip down to the ankles, and thence by metaphor a lane, or alley, which runs off from the broad way in another direction, just as the shin runs out from the body. Hence the Septuagint translate it, ἐν ἀγοραῖς, that is, in the market-places. St. Ambrose, in Book III On Virgins, reads "in the forum": for ἀγορὰ is the forum, where goods for sale are displayed openly to all, or where a gathering of men is wont to take place. Moreover, in a city there are many forums: namely, the cattle-forum, where oxen are sold; the vegetable-forum, where herbs; the swine-forum, where swine; the grain-forum, where grain; the wine-forum, where wines, etc. The bride signifies, then, that she sought the bridegroom in the vineyards and the forums, where the crowd of men is wont to be: but in the crowd the bridegroom is not found, who loves secrecy and solitude, or at least faith and order, such as is in the Church of the faithful. Hear St. Ambrose, Book III On Virgins: "Christ is not a haunter of the marketplace: for Christ is peace, in the marketplace are lawsuits; Christ is justice, in the marketplace iniquity; Christ is faith, in the marketplace fraud and treachery; Christ is a worker, in the marketplace idle leisure; Christ is charity, in the marketplace detraction. In short, the forum is straightway one of thieves; Christ is in the Church, in the forum idols. In the Church the widow is justified, in the forum she is circumvented; let us flee, then, the forum, let us flee the broad ways. For it is not merely an injury not to find him whom you seek, but it is also often a wound where it was not fitting to have sought at all: to have sought in the houses of men who falsely assume to themselves the name of teachers, to have sought more shamelessly than modestly." Yet the bride goes about, because "the flame of love would not allow her to remain at home," says Theodoret. According to the letter, as I have said, she speaks of the apostles going about the streets and broad ways of Jerusalem, preaching the gospel, that they might convert the Jews to Christ: but in them they found not Christ, but Moses; not the spirit, but the flesh; not the truth, but the shadow. Hence the Chaldee, judaizing after his own manner, thus renders it: "The children of Israel said to one another: Let us rise, and let us go, let us go about the tabernacle of the covenant, which Moses pitched outside the camp, and let us seek the doctrine from the face of the Lord, and the holy majesty, which has been taken away from us; and they went about through the cities and the broad ways, and through the streets, and did not find her."

Mystically, by the streets and broad ways Theodoret and Aponius understand the Holy Scriptures; but St. Gregory, Bede, and Anselm understand the examples of the saints, who followed either the stricter manner of living (which the streets denote) or the more relaxed (which the broad ways denote).

Anagogically, Gregory of Nyssa understands the orders and ranks of angels and saints in the heavenly Jerusalem. Hence St. Bernard, Sermon 78, judges that the bride here seeks Christ in the streets and broad ways where a little before he had preached, and had healed the sick; but she does not find him, because Christ, rising from death, had ascended from the earthly Jerusalem to the heavenly.

Tropologically, three Anonymous authors in Theodoret say: The city, they say, is the pious soul, which seeks the bridegroom within itself, walking about alternately through the marketplaces of action and the broad ways of contemplation, and going about from one into the other in turn: thus the Anonymous authors.

But Philo Carpathius: "Through the marketplaces and broad ways, that is, he says, I will rise from the past actions of my life, I will depart from the custom of evil deeds, I will examine my conscience, and I will diligently examine, in their circuit, the actions of my life; I will reconsider the years of my life gone by, I will diligently seek in the city, that is, in the Church, in the holy Scriptures, in the lives and examples of the saints, how I ought to walk rightly toward God, and how I have lived and walked until now: for I have gone by the wide and open ways of sinners, I have imitated the common manners and customs of others: and for this reason he says that she will make inquiry through the marketplaces and the broad ways, according to that: I have thought on my ways: and turned my feet unto thy testimonies, Psalm 118:59. For in the marketplaces and broad ways are displayed, sold, and handled all things suited and pleasing only to the pleasure of the body, by which the souls of Christians are miserably ensnared and slain. She professes herself also to have been troubled by these, and to have been hindered by them from finding the Lord in seeking him: for narrow is the way, and strait is the gate, which leads to life," Matthew 7:14.

Symbolically, the soul goes about the city, when in thought it goes about the world, contemplating heaven, earth, and all things that are in them, as the philosophers did; but they did not find God, both because, although they had known God from these things through a shadow, they nevertheless did not glorify him as God; and because, destitute of the light of faith, they fell into many errors, and by going about relapsed into their own ignorance, and served the creature rather than the Creator, indulging their own pleasures, ambition, and honors, as the Apostle teaches, Romans 1:25: whence, in the circuit of the contemplation and experience of all the goods of the world, Solomon teaches that he found great vanity and affliction, Ecclesiastes 2:3 and following. Wherefore St. Augustine wisely, on Psalm 33, verse 5, upon those words, "I sought the Lord, and he heard me," says: "Seek nothing else from the Lord besides himself, but seek the Lord himself, and he will hear you, and while you are still speaking he will say: Behold, I am here. What is: Behold, I am here? Behold, I am present, what do you want? what do you seek from me? Whatever I shall give you is of less worth than I myself am; possess me myself, enjoy me, embrace me; you cannot yet possess the whole, touch me by faith, and you will cleave to me. This God says to you: I will discharge the rest of your burdens from you, that you may cleave wholly to me, when I shall have converted this mortal part of yours to immortality, so that you may be equal to my angels, and always see my face, and rejoice; and no one will take your joy from you, because you have sought the Lord and he has heard you, and delivered you out of all your tribulations."

Morally, note here that the love of the bride brings forth in her an ardor for seeking the bridegroom; hence, although she did not find him on her little bed, nor in the streets and broad ways, nor with the watchmen; yet at last, all these things having been gone through, she finds him. Wherefore Richard of St. Victor teaches that the bride, by this her anxious going about, profited much in love and ardor of seeking: for this ardor, having suffered rejection a third time, is kindled all the more, just as fire in stubble, stirred by contrary winds, blazes up the more: "For the frustration of the thing loved is a scourge of love to the lover." Hence St. Bernard, in the sermon On the Threefold Bond of Connection: "Let the heart of those who seek the Lord rejoice," he says; "if you rejoice in labors, if you run the way of the commandments with unwearied foot, if each day either state is fresher for advancing and perfecting than for beginning, then assuredly you always seek his face."

Symbolically, Richard of St. Victor here teaches that God is found in a threefold creature, as it were in a threefold likeness of God: first, in animals, the heavens, the elements, and things composed of them; second, in man; third, in the angel, who is the seal of the likeness, and in whom, marked from the beginning, the likeness of God perseveres. He himself, therefore, is the mirror of God: "For they (the angels)," he says, "are clean, just as the Lord their God is holy, and so much so that the soul itself passes from these clean things to the author of cleanness, and from contemplations to the act of contemplating, and immediately finds him: since these are so near, that there is nothing between, and after these there is nothing to find, save him; the beloved being found, and rejoicing with the angels, and recalling the benefit obtained through them, she says: A little while after I had passed by them I found, etc., that is, as soon as I had passed by these I found the beloved; I passed by these that I might come, and through these I passed, that I might find: for by the encounter and help of these I obtained what I desired, who both provoked and kindled my desire, and obtained the encounter of the beloved."

Symbolically again, Gilbert, abbot, successor of St. Bernard, in his exposition of the Canticle, Sermon 1, says fittingly that Christ is sought in the little bed of leisure and tranquility of mind, and in the night of forgetfulness of cares and temporal things: "You are well placed," he says, "in the little bed, if your mind is freely at rest from your occupations by a certain leisure. What is more suited to the exercise of love than freedom and leisure? And freedom gives birth to allurement: in leisure affection is set free, and no small effort is spent upon it." And a little after: "On the other hand, frequent care for the world renders affection almost insensible, and forms, as it were, a certain callus upon the mind. Care entangles the mind, quiet sets it free. The desires, once set free, into what growth do you suppose they expand? Do you see how many good things are contained in the little bed? quiet, freedom, allurement. For in the little bed the desires of quiet and emptiness burn all the more. A place suited to the delight of love urges the bride to seek more ardently. For there she more painfully lacks the beloved, where she could more abundantly enjoy him. In my little bed, he says, and through the nights." And with many things interposed: "Good, then, is the night, which by a prudent forgetfulness disguises all temporal things, that he who is eternal may be sought; a time that sets free and unfolds opportunities; which hides the desire of the world, care, and thought: for this is to have the world hidden, or to be hidden from the world. So also may we be hidden in the secret of thy face, O Lord."

THIRD PRINCIPAL SENSE, Concerning Christ and the Blessed Virgin.

Rupert thus represents the Blessed Virgin speaking: "Already, from the time when he (Christ) was baptized by John, it had begun to come about that, in the little bed, or in my chamber, in that secret place of my dwelling, I did not find him. For he was immediately led into the desert by the Spirit, and afterward returned. He set the Gospel before my affections, so that he said: What is it to me and to thee, woman? But he also taught others to do likewise, namely, that they should leave father and mother for the sake of the Gospel. Thus I sought with desire, and did not find him, that alone I might possess the alone one. I said therefore: I will rise, and go about the city through the streets and the broad ways; I will seek him whom my soul loves. I said, and did so: for when he went about through the cities and towns, preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God, I followed and sought him. I sought him, and found him not. For he, intent on so great a business, in a certain manner pretended not to know me as his mother." And after some things which he interposes on this matter: "After this I stood beside his cross. But was this, indeed, for me to have found the beloved? Nay rather, it was for me to have found a sword, which also pierced through my soul. He was buried, the tomb was closed and sealed; and with what mind did I seek him? with what desire did I desire him, knowing that he was to rise from the dead? Thence I did not find him. Did the watchmen who guard the city find me? What watchmen, or, guarding what city? His disciples, who were appointed for this, that they might guard, nay rather that they might build the true city of Jerusalem. And I said: Have you seen him whom my soul loved? etc. A little while after I had passed by them, I found him whom my soul loves, and not in any ordinary way, but I saw him ascending into heaven, and the apostles, the Holy Spirit having been sent from the heavens, I saw preaching the glory of the Lord."

Now let us bring each point to the anvil, and search more deeply into certain hidden secrets that lie concealed, verse by verse.

Verse 3. The watchmen who guard the city found me (whom I asked, saying): Have you seen him whom my soul loves?

The Hebrew: the guards (sentinels) who go about in the city found me: so too the Septuagint, Aquila, and Symmachus. St. Bernard, sermon 79, notes that the vehemence of love confounds the words in the bride: "O headlong love," he says, "vehement, blazing, impetuous, who permit no thinking of anything besides yourself, you disdain everything else, you despise all things except yourself, content with yourself. You confound order, you disregard custom, you are ignorant of measure; whatever seems to belong to opportunity, to reason, to modesty, to counsel or judgment, you triumph over in yourself, and reduce into captivity. Behold, all that she thinks, and all that she speaks, sounds of you, breathes of you, and nothing else: thus you have claimed for yourself both her heart and her tongue. She says: 'Have you seen him whom my soul loves?' As though indeed these men knew what she herself is thinking. Him whom your soul loves — do you ask about him? And does he have no name? But who indeed are you, and who is he?" Whence he adds: "Love speaks everywhere; and if anyone desires to attain knowledge of these things that are read, let him love, etc. For just as one who does not know Greek does not understand one speaking Greek, nor does one who is not Latin understand one speaking Latin, and so with the rest: so too the language of love will be barbarous to him who does not love, and it will be like sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal."

You will ask who these watchmen, or guardians of the city, are. I answer, first, that literally, properly and genuinely, they are those learned in the law, the high priests, and the rulers of Jerusalem: for it was their office to point out to the people the Messiah, or the Christ, at his coming. These, therefore, the apostles and the faithful rightly questioned about Christ, when they set forth to them, in preaching, the doctrine, life, and miracles of Christ, so that, convinced by these things, they might answer that he was the true Messiah foretold by the prophets and promised to the fathers. But they themselves were expecting the Messiah as a splendid and glorious king, as it were another Solomon: wherefore, when they saw Christ humble, poor, and crucified, they despised him, and did not believe him to be the Messiah. See what was said on verse 1.

Tropologically, the watchmen, that is, the guardians of the Church and of the faithful soul, are first the angels, who clearly know the bridegroom, namely God, indeed see him face to face, and instill knowledge and love of him into men; whence pious men often invoke them, and consult them concerning doubts, and the manner of finding God, and of pleasing him: so Theodoret and three Anonymous authors in him, the Nyssene, homily 6, St. Ambrose, book On Isaac, chapter 5; St. Bernard, Psellus, and others.

Second, the watchmen are the apostles, pastors, and prelates, who watch solicitously over the flock, that is, over the faithful committed to their care; these, therefore, find the bridegroom by the guidance and direction of their pastors: so St. Gregory, Theodoret, Cassiodorus, Bede, Philo, and St. Anselm, who says: "They found" — that is, the holy pastors who guard the Church found me seeking, they recognized my affection. When she said that she was found before she found, she notes for us the vigilance and diligence which pastors ought to have in the Church, namely that, from the moment someone is moved by compunction, they should be ready to admonish him, and to draw him to the knowledge of God. I cited the words of St. Gregory on verse 1. Now hear St. Bernard, sermon 76: "How good are the watchmen, who themselves keep watch while we sleep, as though they were to render an account for our souls! How good are the guardians, who, being watchful in mind, and keeping vigil through the night in prayers, keenly track out the ambushes of the enemies, anticipate the counsels of the malicious, detect snares, elude traps, scatter nets, and frustrate contrivances! These are the lovers of the brethren and of the Christian people, who pray much for the people and for the whole holy city, II Mach. XV, 14. These are they who, greatly solicitous for the Lord's sheep committed to them, give their heart to keep watch at dawn toward the Lord who made them, and make supplication in the sight of the Most High, Eccli. XXXIX, 6."

Wherefore the same St. Bernard, sermon 77, teaches from this example of the bride that the faithful, in doubts, ought to consult their superiors, and obey them; otherwise, if without their counsel they trust in their own wisdom, they expose themselves to the danger of falling: "Let them hear this," he says, "who do not fear to enter upon the ways of life without a guide and a teacher, being to themselves, in the spiritual art, both disciples and masters alike. Nor is this enough: they even heap up disciples for themselves, blind leaders of the blind. How many have been found to have strayed most dangerously from this path! For indeed, being ignorant of the wiles of Satan and his devices, it came about that those who had begun in the spirit were consummated in the flesh, shamefully led away, damnably fallen." Whence he draws this warning: "Let those of this sort see, then, how cautiously they should walk, and take an example from the bride, who did not arrive at him whom she desired in any way, before those met her by whose guidance she might make use, so as to gain knowledge of her beloved, indeed so as to learn the fear of the Lord. He gives his hand to a seducer, while refusing to give it to a teacher. And he who sends sheep out to pasture without a guardian is not a shepherd of sheep, but of wolves."

To this purpose serves the version of the Chaldee, who, judaizing, understands by the watchmen of the Synagogue Moses and Aaron: for thus it reads: "The assembly of Israel said: Moses and Aaron and the Levites keeping the watch of the tabernacle of the covenant, who went about in a circuit, found me, and I asked them concerning the majesty of the glory of the Lord, which had been taken away from me. Moses the scribe, the prince of Israel, answered, and said to them: I will ascend to the high heavens and will pray before the Lord, if perhaps he will be appeased for your sins, and will cause his majesty to dwell among you as of old."

Here belongs the explanation of Aponius, who understands by the watchmen Isaiah and the prophets: for these foretell and proclaim the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ so clearly, that the reader may easily find Christ in them and from them; and of Philo of Carpathia, who understands by the watchmen the just, who vigilantly search out and carry out the law and the will of God: for the examples, counsels, and admonitions of these lead us to Christ, that is, to holiness and perfection.

Third, others also understand by the watchmen the philosophers, whom the gentiles questioned concerning God and the highest good; but they heard nothing but what was uncertain and vain. So Justus of Urgell, who introduces the Church speaking thus: "The wise men of the world, and the worshippers of idols, disputed against me, vainly searching out many things, and composing many books void through their labors, to whom I said: Why do you weary yourselves in vain with superfluous effort: 'Have you seen him whom my soul loves?' since you glory falsely in the name of wisdom; God has made your wisdom foolish, because you were not able to find Christ there."

Fourth, others understand by the watchmen the heretics, who keep watch in order to spread their heresies; and go about cities and kingdoms, in order to seduce the faithful: when the faithful passes by these, and proceeds to orthodox teachers, he finds Christ and the faith of Christ, and the true religion: so Gislerius.

Fifth, Rupert attributes these things to the Blessed Virgin seeking Christ, either lost and found in the temple at Jerusalem, or now dead and buried: "And with what a mind," he says, "I sought him, with what desire I desired him, knowing that he was to rise again from the dead! Yet I did not find him. The watchmen who guard the city found me. What watchmen are these, or guarding what city? His disciples, because they were appointed for this, that they might guard, indeed that they might build up the true city Jerusalem; concerning which, or to which, the Beloved himself says through Isaiah, Isaiah 62:6: Upon your walls, Jerusalem, I have set watchmen, who all the day and all the night, forever, shall not be silent in praising the name of the Lord. These watchmen were already then keeping watch, because, mourning and weeping, they were not taking sleep: these watchmen found me, and the women who, keeping watch the whole night, came to the tomb, and who had also bought spices, that coming they might anoint him — found me, by eagerly vying to bring the good news that he had risen, and that they had seen him. And I said: Have you seen him whom my soul has loved? 'We have seen him,' they say, 'we have seen the Lord. He has truly risen, and has appeared to Simon.'"

VERSE 4. A LITTLE WHILE AFTER I HAD PASSED THEM, I FOUND HIM WHOM MY SOUL LOVES.

The Hebrew reads, as it were, "a little," when I had passed on from them, until I found him whom my soul loves: so too the Septuagint. St. Ambrose reads it as a question and an exclamation: "How little a while it was, when I passed on from them, until I found him whom my soul loves!" As if to say: vehement love brought it about that all the labor, all the journey, all the time that I spent from the questioning of the watchmen until the finding of the bridegroom, seemed to me to be little and slight; just as is said of Jacob, Genesis 29:20: "Jacob served seven years for Rachel: and they seemed to him but a few days, because of the greatness of his love."

Further, the Chaldean refers these words to the building of the Mosaic tabernacle: "As it were a little while," he says, "and a little he did, and the Lord turned back from the wrath of his fury, and the Lord commanded Moses the prophet to make the tabernacle of the covenant, and the ark, and placed his majesty in the midst of it." The literal sense is the one I gave at verse 1, namely, that the Church, that is, St. Peter, St. Paul, and the rest of the apostles, when they had passed beyond the high priests, scribes, and rulers of Jerusalem — inasmuch as these were rejecting the faith of Christ — went to the Gentiles, and there found Christ in the conversion of all the nations, who, hearing the preaching of the gospel, straightway embraced it, and in it, Christ.

Tropologically, first, the soul, instructed by the watchmen, that is, by the angels, ascends to the Creator: for these angels are nearest to God, so that if you pass beyond them, you at once find God, as St. Ambrose teaches, Sermon 7 on Psalm 118. The same author, in the book On Isaac, chapter 5, teaches that the angels are ignorant of some things, and that therefore one must pass beyond them to God, in order to be fully illumined: "The soul," he says, "that seeks God passes even the guards: for there are mysteries which even the angels desire to see. Whence Peter also says: The things announced to you by those who preached the gospel to you, the Holy Spirit having been sent from heaven, into which the angels desire to look, 1 Peter 1:12." So too Nyssen here, Homily 6, teaches that to the one contemplating, the angels and the whole of creation must be passed beyond, so that through faith he may fix the gaze of his mind on the one and highest God.

Secondly, the soul, instructed by the watchmen, that is, by the apostles, pastors, and doctors, and obedient to them, finds Christ, but in such a way that it passes beyond them, that is, does not cling to them, nor fix its hope on others than on Christ: so St. Gregory, Book 18 of the Morals, chapter 27: "When the Church," he says, "was seeking her Redeemer, she was unwilling to fix her hope in the ancient preachers, she who says: A little while after I had passed them by, I found him whom my soul loves. For she could not have found him, if she had been unwilling to pass beyond these." The same St. Gregory, in this same place: "The soul," he says, "passes the watchmen after a little while and finds the beloved: because while it considers that the holy doctors were mere men, it raises the mind to the Godhead, and there recognizes its bridegroom, equal to the Father, above men, whom it then says it has found, when, aided by holy labors, it fixes for a little while the eye of faith, as though contemplating in a mirror, upon the brightness of his divinity." So too Cassiodorus, Bede, Philo, and others. Cassiodorus adds: "To pass the watchmen," he says, "is diligently to examine their sayings and teaching." St. Anselm adds: "He says 'a little while' for this reason, that the knowledge of God is had without great labor: for as soon as God perceives the affection of the one seeking, he offers himself and freely presses in." Yet that saying of St. Augustine on Psalm 104, conclusion 2, is true: "What is sought with more difficulty is usually found the more sweetly": as happened here to the bride, who accordingly adds: "I held him, and I will not let him go."

Thirdly, Justus of Urgel, taking the watchmen as the philosophers, expounds it thus: When I had passed beyond the wise men of the world, understanding their wisdom to be foolishness (for "God has made its wisdom foolish," 1 Corinthians 1:20), I arrived at Christ, who is the power and wisdom of God.

Fourthly, St. Ambrose, in the book On Isaac and the Soul, chapter 5, presses the word "a little while," as if to say: A little after temptations and tribulations, Christ is present, strengthening and consoling: "Many," he says, "seek Christ in leisure and do not find him, and seek him in persecutions and quickly find him; and therefore, as it were after temptations, because he is present in the dangers of his faithful. How little a while," he says, "when I passed on from them! I found him, I held him, and did not let him go. For everyone who seeks, finds; and whoever has found, must cling fast, lest he be able to lose him."

Allegorically, St. Bernard, Sermon 79, teaches that Christ passed in the resurrection, and passed beyond in the ascension, and that accordingly the bride, through faith, must follow him in both, so as to find him seated at the right hand of God. "Now," he says, "since he had already passed by rising, and had added to pass beyond by ascending as well, she too rightly showed that she had not merely passed, but passed beyond — she who followed him by faith and devotion even to the heavens. Therefore, to believe the resurrection is to pass; to believe also the ascension is to pass beyond." And a little further on: "Therefore, what was lacking to her, instructed by these things — namely, that he who had risen had also ascended — she too ascended likewise, that is, she passed beyond and found: how should she not have found him, reaching him in mind, where he is in body?"

Finally, do you wish to find Christ? Seek him in the manger of humility and poverty, on the cross of patience and martyrdom, in the towns and villages of preaching and zeal for souls, and finally in the bosom of the Blessed Virgin, that is, in the purity and invocation of the Blessed Virgin — there you will find him. Hear Philo of Carpasia: "O how the soul of the faithful holds him, and (so to speak) compels him, while it does what is pleasing and acceptable to him! For the bridegroom delights, as does the bride, in the life, character, companionship, and habits of the just: and he is held by works of virtue, not by the hands of armed men, not by the pomps of the rich, not by the boasting of the wealthy, not by the arrogance of the proud, not by those laboring under the disease of gluttony, sleep, luxury, or envy, but by works of mercy, piety, continence, humility, temperance, benevolence, chastity, and by the prayers of the upright; then the bridegroom, willing, is most gladly brought into the house of our mother."

By the house of the mother and the chamber of her that bore me can also be understood the Roman Church, over which the Supreme Pontiff presides, as successor of St. Peter and vicar of Christ; which is accordingly the mother and matrix of all the Churches, since she either first converted all the rest to the faith of Christ, or, once they were converted, nourishes, cherishes, keeps, strengthens, and advances them, as a mother, on the milk of her doctrine — as if to say: The bride, that is, the Church of the Gentiles: I will not let go of Christ and his faith, but will share it together with the Roman Pontiff and the Church.

I HELD HIM; I WILL NOT LET HIM GO, UNTIL I BRING HIM INTO THE HOUSE OF MY MOTHER, AND INTO THE CHAMBER OF HER WHO CONCEIVED ME.

The Septuagint: until I brought him into the house of my mother, and εἰς ταμιεῖον, that is, into the storeroom; St. Ambrose: into the secret place; in Hebrew it is אל חדר el cheder, that is, into the inner chamber (namely, into the innermost and most intimate part of the house) of her who conceived me.

In the chamber and storeroom are kept whatever things are dear and precious: there too lovers say and transact whatever secret things; whence the bride asserts that she was conceived and born there, as if to say: As soon as I found the bridegroom, uniquely beloved and sought with such zeal, I seized (for this is the Hebrew אחזתיו achaztiw) him, I held and clasped him fast, and I will not let him go, but will bring him into the chamber of her who conceived me, so that there I may enclose him as a most precious thing, lest he withdraw from me any further, but that I may continually dwell with him, speak mouth to mouth, transact secretly, and devote myself wholly and sacredly to his love, and enjoy him: for in the chamber is the nuptial bridal-couch. So Theodoret.

THE FIRST, ADEQUATE SENSE, Concerning Christ and the Church.

Literally it signifies, as I said at verse 1, that the Church of the Gentiles, once she has received Christ through faith and worship, will never let him go, but will remain always in his faith and love, until she brings the same into the Synagogue — that is, into the heart and dwelling of the Jews (for this is the mother of the Church of Christians) — and betroths her to Christ as a bride: for in the chamber the bridegroom dwells with the bride. So St. Gregory, Cassiodorus, Philo, Alcuin, Bede, Justus, Aponius, Anselm, Honorius, Rupert, St. Bernard, and others everywhere. Hear St. Bernard, Sermon 79: "He who enters the bridal chamber is the bridegroom. Great is the power of love! The Savior had gone forth indignant from his house and inheritance, and now, softened toward her favor, he is so bent that he returns not merely as savior, but also as bridegroom. Blessed art thou by the Lord, O daughter, who both restrainest indignation and restorest the inheritance. Blessed art thou to thy mother, by whose kindness wrath is turned away, salvation returns, he returns who says to her: I am your salvation, Psalm 34:3. This does not suffice: let him add, and say: And I will betroth you to me forever: and I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in judgment, and in mercy and in compassion. And I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, Hosea 2:19. But remember, that she who brings about these friendships is the bride. How then does she yield this bridegroom to another, not to say, desire it? It is not so. The good daughter indeed desires him for her mother, yet not that she should yield him to her, but that she should share him. One suffices for two, except that now they will no longer be two, but one in him. For he himself is our peace, who makes the two one, so that there may be one bride, and one bridegroom, Jesus," etc.

Symbolically, by the house of the mother and the chamber of her that bore me, Sacred Scripture can be understood, which was received, for the greater part, from the mother of the Church, that is, from the Synagogue, as if to say: I will make firm myself and my faithful, and I will even convert the Jews, through Sacred Scripture, by bringing them into its sayings and meanings: for these plainly contain the dogmas of the true faith and set them before those who read — so Justus of Urgel. Hence the Chaldean, judaizing in his own manner, renders: "And the people of the house of Israel offered their oblations, and gave diligence to the words in the upper room of the house of the teaching of Moses their master, and in the chamber of Joshua son of Nun his minister."

Anagogically, the sense is, as if the Church and the holy soul were to say: I will not let go my Christ, until he himself brings me into heaven, as into the nuptial chamber, that there I may be made one spirit with him: for the heavenly Church of God, of angels and of the blessed, is the mother of the earthly Church, that is, of the Church militant on earth, as the Apostle teaches, Galatians 4:26: "That Jerusalem which is above," he says, "is free, which is our mother": so Theodoret and Justus of Urgel.

Furthermore, the bride does not say: Until the bridegroom himself brings me into heaven, but until I bring him in, out of the confidence of love — as if to say: I shall so bind and unite the bridegroom to myself through love, that it is not so much he who brings me, as I who bring him, into heaven; both because love is bold and imperious — for the one who loves commands, by love, the beloved, however more worthy he be, and makes him equal to herself, nay, subjects him. For the lover, being obedient to the friend, in turn makes that friend obedient to herself, just as Jacob compelled the angel — and in him, God — to obey him and to bless him, wherefore he was called Israel, that is, one who rules over God, Genesis 32:28. This is the power of love and of obedience. Whence also of Joshua, chapter 10:13, when at his command the sun stood still, it is said: "The Lord obeying the voice of a man"; and also because the holy soul is the seat and vehicle of Christ remaining within it, wherefore it carries him wherever it pleases, and so even into heaven, according to that saying: "Glorify and carry God in your body," 1 Corinthians 6:20.

THE SECOND, PARTIAL SENSE, Concerning Christ and the Holy Soul.

Tropologically, the holy soul apprehends Christ by faith and hope, holds him by devotion, clasps him by charity, and does not let him go, but brings him into the house of the mother and the chamber of her that bore her — that is, into her own mind, which is, as it were, the mother, nurse, and foster-mother of all the soul's virtues, senses, and powers — so that she may continually think of him and meditate on him, and converse with him and take sweet delight in him: so Nyssen, Philo, the three Anonymous authors in Theodoret, and others. Hear Nyssen: "I will no longer let go of God, once seized by the grasp of faith, until he is within my inner chamber, which chamber is my very heart. But this truly comes to pass when it has returned to that state in which it was from the beginning, when it was made by her who conceived it." He adds "that he would stray from the truth who should understand by the name of mother the first mother of our constitution to be signified, which indeed is none other than God himself." And Richard of St. Victor teaches that grace is the mother of the devout soul, which regenerates it spiritually, and dwells in the mind as in a house. The holy soul therefore says: I will bring Christ into my mind, that he himself may fully and completely possess it, and my mind may fail from itself, and pass wholly, as it were, into Christ through love.

"God," says Richard, "is held by devotion, by desire, by importunity, by remembrance, by prayer, by faith, and by the expectation of being heard; and he is not let go, if the soul does not cease from its intent, nor let its countenance be turned any further to other things. Thus it holds the beloved, even though it be dawn; nor does it let him go until he has blessed it. It wrestled with him the whole night, in which it slept, but its heart kept watch; because, that is, it ceased from outward occupation, and labored in seeking the beloved: and even though it should come through the night to the dawn, it does not cease from the struggle, that is, from the insistence of prayer, nor does it let the beloved go, unless he give his blessing, so that it may go from strength to strength, and see the God of gods in Sion — that is, in contemplation through a mirror, and in a riddle it seeks this blessing and a change of name, so that it may be called no longer Jacob, but Israel, and need no longer supplant vices further, but, its vices having been overcome, may enjoy the purity of the virtues, and contemplate God: for blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God, Matthew 5:8."

Hence St. Anselm, by the chamber of her that bore her, understands the faithful, who through holiness make their mind a little bed, in which Christ may sweetly rest. To this comes Hugh of St. Victor, Book 6 of the Exposition on the Celestial Hierarchy of St. Dionysius, who thus addresses the holy soul: "Therefore God will enter to you, that you may enter to him; for then you enter to him, when he himself enters to you. When his love enters and penetrates your heart, and his love reaches to the innermost of your heart, then he enters into you yourself, and you too enter yourself, so that you may enter to him. But it is necessary that he come as far as the bridal chamber and enter the chamber, and that he penetrate even to your inmost parts, and rest there. Indeed, perhaps he does not even love the chamber of the father, unless he is brought into the chamber of the mother, where love is more tender and its caresses sweeter, so that manly harshness may find nothing hard and rigid in you, but everything may melt and soften in the fire of love." But Aponius: "When you shall have read the divine law with a pure heart," he says, "and taught what it has commanded to be done, you bring the exultant Christ into the house of the mother. But when you shall have been worthy to expound his wonderful mysteries, and, by announcing the true redemption of the human race, the gift of grace to the blind Jew and to the Gentile, you shall bring the reborn Christ into the chamber of the nurse."

Finally, St. Bernard, Sermon 83, teaches that the bridegroom is held by charity. For love is a conformity, a marriage contract, and an embrace of bridegroom and bride: "Such conformity," he says, "weds the soul to the Word, since to him, to whom by nature she is like, she likewise shows herself like by will, loving as she is loved. Therefore, if she loves perfectly, she has been wedded. What is more delightful than this conformity? what more desirable than charity? by which it comes about that, not content with human instruction, you, O soul, approach the Word confidently by yourself, cleave to the Word steadfastly, question the Word familiarly, and take counsel of him about every matter, as bold in desire as you are capable in understanding? This is truly a spiritual and holy marriage contract. I have said too little in calling it a contract: it is an embrace. An embrace indeed, where the same is willed, and the same is not willed, making one spirit out of two."

And a little further on he adds: "Love is sufficient to itself; love, wherever it comes, draws all the other affections into itself and takes them captive. Therefore she who loves, loves, and knows nothing else. He who is rightly an object of honor, rightly an object of wonder and marvel — yet to be loved he loves more. They are bridegroom and bride. What other bond or connection do you seek between spouses, besides to be loved and to love?" And soon after: "God requires to be feared as Lord, honored as Father, loved as Bridegroom, etc. Love itself is its own merit, its own reward. Love requires no cause beyond itself, no fruit. Its fruit is its use. I love, because I love; I love in order that I may love. Love is a great thing, provided it runs back to its own origin, provided, once returned to its source, and poured back into its own fountain, it always draws from it whence it may flow continually. Of all the movements, senses, and affections of the soul, love alone is that in which the creature can, though not on equal terms, respond to its author, or return, out of something like it, a mutual exchange."

From all these things St. Bernard at last concludes: "Grant that the honor of a king loves judgment, but the love of a bridegroom — nay, the bridegroom who is love — requires only a return of love, and faith. Let it therefore be permitted to love the beloved in return: why should not the bride love, and love the bridegroom of love? Why should not love be loved? Rightly renouncing all other affections, she leans upon love alone and wholly, she who has it in her power to answer that very love by returning love. For even when she has poured herself wholly into love, how much is this compared to that fountain's everlasting outflow?" Finally, Richard of St. Victor, treatise On the Degrees of Charity, chapter 1: "Charity," he says, "is the life of faith, the strength of hope, and the innermost force and marrow of all the virtues. This orders life, kindles the affections, shapes the acts, corrects excesses, composes conduct, prevailing over all things and prevailing above all things, so that it renders even omnipotence itself, in a certain manner, powerless." He gives the example of Moses, who, praying out of charity for the people worshiping the calf, bound, as it were, the hands of God, so that he had to say: "Let me alone, that my wrath may rage against them, and I may destroy them," Exodus 32:10; and after a few words: "The power of love alone is able to hold God, which not only suffers itself to be held, but piously complains in the Prophet that it is not held: I sought among them a man who might set up a hedge, and stand opposed before me on behalf of the land, that I might not destroy it: and I found none," Ezekiel 22:30. Finally he concludes thus: "Strong in adversity, but stronger in prosperity: for the love of Christ alone is that which purely spurns and spits upon the blandishments of fortune, whether smiling or mocking, delighted by a sweeter savor, in comparison with which all sweetness is bitter, all pleasure is sorrow, all beauty is foulness, all delight is trouble." Furthermore, Bede and St. Ambrose, in the book On Isaac, chapter 5, apply these words to St. Magdalene, holding the feet of Christ after the resurrection.

Symbolically, Philo of Carpasia and the three Anonymous authors in Theodoret hold that the mind is called the house of the mother, that is, of the wisdom of God, which is the cause and mother of all things: for the mind, capable of wisdom, is as it were the dwelling of the Word, by reason of likeness; the same is the chamber, on account of the hidden treasures of its virtues, which it keeps stored within itself as an image; whence Philo: "By the house of the mother," he says, "I judge is to be understood the heart of the heavenly wisdom of the Word himself, and by the chamber of her that bore me this same heart. For I think 'house' is said on account of that which is read: I will dwell in them and walk among them, 2 Corinthians 6:16. But by 'chamber' (since in a chamber the best and most precious things are placed) is meant faith, hope, charity, justice, fortitude, temperance, patience, virtue; for these are ornaments not of the body, but of the mind."

Examples of this teaching are David, saying, Psalm 72:28: "But it is good for me to cleave to God"; St. Paul, saying, Romans 8:35: "Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? tribulation? or distress? or famine? or nakedness? or danger? or persecution? or the sword? etc. For I am sure that neither death, nor life," etc. Excellently St. Bernard, Sermon 79: "It is good to cling, says Isaiah, chapter 12:7. What is more tenacious than this glue, which is neither washed away by waters, nor dissolved by winds, nor cut through by swords? In short, many waters could not quench charity. I held him, and I will not let him go." And the holy Patriarch, Genesis 32:26: "I will not let you go," he says, "unless you bless me." Thus she does not wish to let him go, and perhaps she does not wish it even more than the Patriarch did, because not even for a blessing — since he, once he had received the blessing, let him go, but she does not do so. I do not want, she says, your blessing, but you. For what have I in heaven? and what have I desired from you upon earth? Psalm 72:25. "I will not let go." He adds then that Christ holds the holy soul more than he is held by her: "Nor perhaps does he wish any the less to be held, since he declares, saying, Proverbs 8:31: My delights are to be with the children of men. And what he promises, saying, Matthew 28:20: Behold, I am with you all days, even to the end of the world"; "What is stronger than this bond, which is made firm by the so vehement will of two as one?" St. Bernard adds that the bringing of Christ into the house confers salvation, but entrance into the chamber confers a special grace: "It was enough," he says, "for salvation, if he entered the house; but the secrecy of the chamber signifies grace. Today, he says, salvation has come to this house, Luke 19:9. Why should there not be salvation for the household, when the Savior has entered the house? But she who deserves to receive him into the chamber has her own secret apart to herself. Salvation comes to the house: delights are stored up in the bridal chamber."

THE THIRD, PRINCIPAL SENSE, Concerning Christ and the Blessed Virgin.

The Blessed Virgin, anxiously seeking the lost Christ, found him among the doctors in the Temple, held him and did not let him go, until she brought him into the house of his mother, that is, into Judea, permitting Christ, and depriving herself of his most sweet presence, so that he himself, by preaching, might go about the towns and villages, and join all to himself through faith and grace. Whence she herself was also the cause of Christ's first miracle, namely, the turning of water into wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, on account of which the disciples believed in Christ, as St. John teaches, chapter 2:11. The same will be the cause why the Synagogue of the Jews, at the end of the world, is converted to Christ through Elijah, just as it is the very cause why so many sinners repent and are converted to Christ, as is evident from the histories and lives of the saints. Finally, she herself, brought by Christ into heaven, in that same way brings in the souls devoted to her, as St. Bernard, St. Anselm, St. Germanus, St. Bonaventure, and the rest who have written on the praises of the Virgin teach.

THE VOICE OF THE BRIDEGROOM.

VERSE 5. I ADJURE YOU, DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM, BY THE ROES AND STAGS OF THE FIELDS, THAT YOU STIR NOT UP, NOR CAUSE THE BELOVED TO AWAKEN, UNTIL SHE HERSELF SHALL WISH.

These words are repeated here, for we have already heard them at chapter 2, verse 7: wherefore the bride seems here again to have fallen into sleep and ecstasy. First, she fell into ecstasy at chapter 2, verse 5, saying: «Support me with flowers, surround me with apples: for I languish with love:» for vehement love begets ecstasy, indeed ecstasy is the most sublime and most perfect act of love. «For divine love is that which causes ecstasy,» says St. Dionysius, On the Divine Names. From this ecstasy the bride seems to have been roused, here at chapter 3, verses 1 and 2, saying: «I will rise, and will go about the city: through the streets and the broad places I will seek him whom my soul loveth;» but partly from the labor and going about of seeking the bridegroom, partly from the finding and presence of the bridegroom, of whom she soon adds: «I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him; and I will not let him go,» again from the vehement love and joy with which she was overwhelmed, and as it were melting while enjoying the bridegroom uniquely beloved, falling into his bosom and falling asleep, she fell into a swoon of soul and ecstasy, from which the bridegroom forbids her to be roused: because just as he himself loves the bride most ardently, so he in turn desires most ardently to be loved by her, and to be held through her loving. For many things in this drama, as also in others, are passed over in silence; but they are understood from the circumstances, and are to be supplied by the interpreter.

Allegorically, it signifies the primitive Church, that is, the apostles, who after the labor and distraction of some years, which they spent in converting Judea, betook themselves for some time to the quiet of prayer and the leisure of contemplation, that they might restore the powers of the mind, and prepare themselves more ardently for new and greater labors, namely for the conversion of all the nations. For this work there was need of a mighty spirit, which it was fitting to rouse by praying and to ask of God; wherefore Christ forbids them to be roused from this so pious sleep and rest. Let apostolic men imitate the apostles, that after the labors of action, they may from time to time betake themselves to the leisure of contemplation, that they may restore the powers of the soul, and conceive new ardors for evangelizing.

Moreover, I have explained this verse at chapter 2, verse 4; wherefore nothing else occurs here to be added.

Here ends the second part of the book, or the second act of this drama; the third follows.

THE THIRD PART OF THE CANTICLE, OR THE THIRD ACT OF THE DRAMA.

As in the second act, which was from chapter 2, verse 8, up to here, Solomon described the adolescence of the Church, or its growth and propagation: so in this third act, which begins here, and extends up to chapter 5, verse 2, he describes the same Church's manly age, or perfection, in which she has been advanced and exalted to, as it were, the highest summit and her own crown. In this song, says Titelmannus, which continues to the end of the chapter, the Holy Spirit speaks, and wonderfully commends the beauty of the Church under diverse comparisons. First, indeed, under the likeness of a beautiful woman, ascending upward with great glory in a great fragrance of perfumes. Second, under the likeness of the precious couch of King Solomon, always fortified with the guard of most valiant men. Third, under the comparison of a most beautiful and most delightful-to-behold litter, or royal carriage. After which the same Spirit then, by way of conclusion, exhorts the daughters of Jerusalem, namely faithful souls, to the due worship of the bridegroom, saying: Go forth, daughters of Sion, and see king Solomon. See what was said in the Preface, chapter 3.

The Voice of the Synagogue First Converted to Christ, On the Church of the Gentiles.

VERSE 6. Who is this, who comes up through the desert, like a wand of smoke, from the spices of myrrh, and of frankincense, and of all the powder of the perfumer?

Who is this, who comes up through the desert (the Syriac and the Arabic have, from the desert), like a wand of smoke from the spices of myrrh, and of frankincense, and of all the powder of the perfumer? that is, of the spice-dealer or apothecary, who reduces spices to powder, mixes them, compounds them, etc.

As regards the form of the drama, the Shulamite is here introduced, that is, the bride of Solomon, tall of stature, walking with grace and magnificence, and ascending from the desert — that is, from the countryside and the outlying fields — to the bridegroom Solomon, who dwelt in Jerusalem and on Mount Sion; for there the temple and the palace of Solomon stood — as if to say: Who is this rustic maiden, who, borne up to the royal bridal chamber, walks so splendidly? Hence she herself is compared to a wand of the smoke of spices, which rises straight up on high, and breathes forth a sweet odor; wherefore those who see her, and meet her, admiring her graceful and magnificent bearing, ask one another and exclaim: "Who is this who comes up," etc. — as if to say: Whence such delights in the desert? Whence such grace and majesty in a rustic and foreign girl, who grows like a wand of smoke; for the higher the vapor of the smoke of spices rises, the more its fragrance is perceived.

For "wand," the Hebrew is תמירות temiroth (a word found only here, and in Joel chapter 2, verse 30, where our Vulgate and the Septuagint render it "vapor"), that is, of palms — but artificial ones, such as are made in likeness and painted. For smoke rising straight up is like a palm tree, which, being formed of various branches grown together and compacted, is the straightest, densest and most beautiful of all trees; for at its top it spreads its branches widely on every side, and is girded and crowned with them as if with hair: in like manner smoke exhaling from various spices grows together, and climbs on high most straight, most dense and most beautiful, and at its top, cutting itself as it were into various parts like branches, and gathering itself into several as it were globes of vapor, is adorned and encircled by them as by variegated hair.

Hence the rabbis and Pagninus render it: who is this who comes up like columns of smoke ascending upward like a palm? Aquila, as found in Theodoret, like the likeness of smoke; Symmachus, as the vaporing of incense; the Septuagint, ως στέλεχος καπνού, that is, like a trunk, or stock, or wand of smoke. It is a wonder, then, that St. Ambrose, epistle 62, reads, like a shoot of the vine. Our Vulgate aptly renders it "wand," because the Hebrew temiroth is a diminutive from תמר thamar, that is, palm; temiroth, then, is a little palm, or small palm, or a wand resembling a little palm. The Syriac, like the incense of smoke; the Arabic, as if perfumed with the branches of frankincense.

Again, for "from the spices," our Vulgate, with Symmachus, reads מקטורת miketoret, that is, from incense, from a fume-offering, or from perfuming and aromatic smoke, which is made from spices; but with other vowel-points they read מקוטרת mecuttereth, that is, perfumed, or fumigated; but the sense comes to the same thing. Wherefore the Septuagint renders it: who is this who comes up from the desert like a trunk of smoke, exhaling myrrh and frankincense, from all the powders of the ointment-maker? Aquila: like the likeness of smoke from the perfuming of myrrh and frankincense, etc. St. Ambrose, epistle 62: like a shoot of the vine, kindled with smoke, made fragrant with myrrh and frankincense from all the powders of the ointment.

The sense of the grammatical, outer letter, then, is this — as if to say: Those who met the bride, and admired her, said: Who is this bride, tall and comely, walking so magnificently across the field toward Jerusalem, and breathing forth so sweet an odor? For the more she advances and ascends, the taller she appears, and the sweeter is the odor of myrrh, frankincense and the other spices that she exhales, so that she seems very like a wand, or little columns, of smoke, which, like a palm, rise straight up on high, and breathe forth the most pleasing breath of myrrh, frankincense and spices (which, reduced to powder, are mixed and blended together) when kindled by fire, and waft it upon all who meet her.

The Chaldee, as is its custom, takes this typically of the Synagogue; for the Synagogue was a type of the Church: "When," it says, "the children of Israel went up out of the desert, and crossed the Jordan with Joshua the son of Nun, the peoples of the land said: Who is this chosen nation, that comes up from the desert, perfumed with the incense of spices, and helped because of the merit of Abraham, who served and prayed before the Lord on Mount Moriah, and anointed with the oil of unction because of the righteousness of Isaac, who was bound in the house of the Sanctuary, which is called the mountain of frankincense, and to whom wonders are done because of the mercy of Jacob, with whom he wrestled until the rising of the dawn, and prevailed over him, and he himself was freed, and his twelve tribes."

The First Sense, Fully Adequate: Concerning Christ and the Church.

The primitive Church, gathered from the apostles and the rest of the Jews in Sion and Jerusalem, having heard of the conversion of St. Cornelius through St. Peter, and of the Gentiles through St. Paul and Barnabas, cries out in wonder: "Who is this" new and beautiful Church, rising thin and slender from the desert of paganism like a wand of smoke, but which, by the continual ascent of smoke gathering itself upward, grows into a great breadth, and breathes forth the sweetest odor of virtues? For she breathes frankincense, that is, the Godhead of Christ: for she believes Christ to be God, and offers him frankincense, that is, sacrifices and divine honors; and myrrh, of the humanity and passion of Christ: for she believes that Christ, being God, took upon himself for our sake a human nature, and in it suffered, was crucified, died and was buried; and all the powder of the perfumer, that is, she exhales and spreads in every direction the rest of the doctrine of evangelical preaching.

So Philo of Carpasia, Justus of Urgell, Theodoret, Aponius, Bede and Anselm, who hold these to be the words of the faithful of the primitive Church, although Rupert holds these to be the words of the bridegroom Christ, and Cassiodorus that they are the words of the companions of the bridegroom.

Hear Theodoret: "Not without reason is the pious soul said to be like the smoke of a fume-offering, since, as the Apostle says, she has made her members a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; and she is said to be redolent of myrrh and frankincense, out of all the powders of the perfumer, because she adores the humanity of Christ, signified by the myrrh, and the divinity, signified by the frankincense, and both believes in the death of the bridegroom and confesses his everlasting being, and so the holy angels admire, out of all the powders of the perfumer, his myrrh and frankincense; because although she may have other virtues drawn from divine Scripture as from the perfumer's workshop, yet in her the myrrh and frankincense excel above all, that is, the knowledge of the bridegroom's divinity and humanity."

Again, the Church breathes frankincense, because she is devoted to prayer; and myrrh, because she strives for the mortification of the affections, that she may put off the old Adam, and put on the new, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth, Ephesians 4:24; and all the powder of the perfumer, that is, humility, obedience, almsgiving, and the other virtues, which are the companions, indeed the daughters, of prayer and mortification. For just as spices, crushed and pounded into powder, exhaling the fiery breath which they enclosed within themselves, breathe forth a sweeter odor: so also the virtues, as it were ground small and crushed by humility, smell the sweeter to God and to men. So St. Gregory, Bede, Aponius and the rest, and St. Ambrose, book On Isaac, chapter 5.

This sense is clear from the event which St. Luke narrates historically, Acts 10:43 and following, where the faithful Jews, hearing of the conversion of the Gentiles, cried out in amazement: "Because upon the nations also the grace of the Holy Spirit has been poured out." Therefore to the Gentiles also God has given repentance unto life. Likewise from what Isaiah foretold concerning this conversion of the Gentiles, chapter 35, verse 1: "The desert places and the pathless land shall be glad, and the wilderness shall exult, and shall flower like the lily. Budding, it shall bud, and shall exult, rejoicing and praising: the glory of Lebanon is given to it: the beauty of Carmel and Sharon: they themselves shall see the glory of the Lord, and the beauty of our God."

And chapter 41, verse 18: "I will open rivers in the tops of the hills, and fountains in the midst of the plains: I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the impassable land into streams of water. I will give in the wilderness the cedar, and the thorn, and the myrtle, and the olive tree: I will set in the desert the fir tree, the elm, and the box tree together." And chapter 43, verse 19: "Behold, I do new things, and now they shall spring forth, verily you shall know them: I will make a way in the desert, and rivers in the impassable land. The beast of the field shall glorify me, the dragons and the ostriches: because I have given waters in the desert, rivers in the impassable land, to give drink to my people, my chosen." See what is said there. This is what the Apostle marvels at, Ephesians 2:11: "That at one time, he says, you Gentiles in the flesh, etc. For you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants, having no hope of the promise, and without God in this world. But now in Christ Jesus, you, who once were far off, have been made near in the blood of Christ."

Indeed, as the Jews fell away from the faith, the Gentiles were substituted into the Church: at which the Apostle, astonished, cries out, Romans 11:33: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways!"

Furthermore, the conversion of the Gentiles was admirable with respect to all its causes: first, the material cause, because those converted were proud, carnal, fierce, barbarous men, unfit for the discipline of Christ; second, the formal cause, because Christian conversion and holiness consists in the mortification of the passions, in humility, in chastity, in patience, in the love of enemies, and the like, which are repugnant to corrupted nature; third, the efficient cause, because it was accomplished by the apostles, who were fishermen, poor, base, unlearned, unlettered, unskilled in speech, as the Apostle teaches, 1 Corinthians 1:21; fourth, the final cause, because it has for its end glory, not earthly, but heavenly: whence, against nature, it must as it were ascend into heaven.

Hence he says "ascends," first, because just as the vapor of earthly or marshy smoke, roused by the rays of the sun, ascends on high from the desert, so from the desert of paganism, roused by the rays of the grace of Christ, there ascends the sweetest vapor and odor of contrition, prayer and the other virtues. Second, because Christ, ascending into heaven, draws the Church after him, so that she may transfer her mind and heart to the things above, and to heavenly glory; whence the Apostle says: He "has made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," Ephesians chapter 2, verse 6. Wherefore the Church, not only triumphant but also militant, is called heavenly, indeed heaven, because she is called by God from heaven to a heavenly life, and is heaven itself, according to that, Apocalypse chapter 21, verse 2: "I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, prepared by God, as a bride adorned for her husband." For this reason the assembly of the Gentiles is here said to ascend from the desert of idolatry and paganism to the Church militant of Christ, inasmuch as she is exalted in her calling, and heavenly in doctrine and life.

Third, because it alludes to the ascent and journey of the Hebrews out of the desert of Arabia, with Moses as leader, into Sion and Jerusalem, with the column of fire and cloud going before; for this was a type of the Church of the Gentiles, about to ascend from the desert of unbelief to the primitive Church of the apostles, and of the faithful converted from among the Jews, in Jerusalem and Judea.

The sense, then, is what Cosmas Hortolanus pathetically expresses, as if to say: The primitive Church, that is, the first believers converted from the Jews, while Paul and Barnabas were converting the Gentiles to Christ, Acts 13:48: What is this, O Paul and Barnabas, that I see rising from the desert of the Gentiles? Who is this new bride, whom you, as groomsmen, having summoned her out of the deserted nations, lead into the bridal chamber of my bridegroom, so greatly perfumed, breathing the fume of myrrh and frankincense and of all the spices of the ointment-maker's art, crushed and mingled together, so that the vapor which exhales from her seems at first a wand, and then, gathering itself upward, to resemble the loftiest palms and columns? Doubtless because of her assiduous prayers and pious works of every kind, which, proceeding from the faith and charity with which she is wholly aflame, rise up, like the sweetest fumes of a holocaust, in an unbroken mist even into the sight of God in heaven, and vehemently delight my bridegroom.

Who would ever have believed that so great a multitude of the Gentiles, once ignorant of Christ, alien from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the promise of the covenants, lacking every hope and even God himself, should now be granted the right of citizenship of the city of God, and, with my mother the Synagogue repudiated, be ennobled by the marriage of Christ my bridegroom? Once the Canaanite peoples marveled, and were utterly astonished, when they saw our forefathers coming up from the desert of Arabia, with a column of smoke going before them, and at times a column of fire by night, invading their possessions. Now, in turn, we Jews marvel that the Gentiles come up from the desert of unbelief, and, breathing upward the misty and sweetest-smelling smoke of their faith and charity like palms and aromatic columns, break into the evangelical kingdom that is the inheritance of our nation.

But whom, through you as teachers, I understand to be, along with me, coheirs and bodily and joint partakers of the promise, chosen by God, with them I gladly share our city and all our fortunes. Those virgin souls whom I see, near to me in faith, charity, and consummated righteousness, betrothed to my Christ through you as groomsmen, and brought to him (as I recall the royal prophet foretold), I admit into the common bridal chamber, rejoicing and exulting for joy.

Symbolically, three anonymous writers, as found in Theodoret, explain it thus: "Who is this, who, from a disposition removed from disturbances, mounts up, raised to God through virtue and knowledge, like a shoot of smoke, which, from a fire feeding upon a forest, is lightly borne up into the air. For thus the soul, kindled by the spirit, thinning, through action, the grossness of the flesh, and, through contemplation, the forms of things, is borne lightly to God by upright conduct and speech alike, and is not weighed down by earthly weight. For this reason, being redolent of myrrh and frankincense from the spices, and of all the powder of the perfumer, it is carried up to the heavenly bridegroom."

Then they adapt each particular to each: "By virtue, then, as by myrrh, when it mortifies the sense of the flesh, it is fragrant; and by knowledge, as by frankincense, as by the marks of truth, it shows itself to be the divine image. Thus, passing through the natures of things, it smells sweetly and tends toward their author; from which, like powder, their reasons and modes are stirred up for it, these being made fine by the paths of truth that search them out, through exact speech, which cooks the whole of this, as it were, in the fire of the spirit."

They are to be winnowed by a most subtle consideration, lest by chance something hard remain in them. Furthermore, St. Ambrose, instead of "like a wand of smoke," reads "like a shoot of the vine," which, although it disagrees with the Hebrew and the Greek, nevertheless has a fitting sense. For the Church of the Gentiles is, as it were, a branch grafted into the vine, namely Christ, because from him she draws all faith, grace, holiness, wisdom, and spirit, just as a branch draws all its strength and sap from the vine. Again, although a branch necessarily takes something from the earth, yet it does not suck up that vast and unclean thing which is earthly as such, but something first refined and purged through the roots of the vine, and already turned into another, purer nature.

Ambrose, instead of "like a wand of smoke," reads "like a shoot of the vine," which, although it disagrees with the Hebrew and the Greek, nevertheless has a fitting sense. For the Church of the Gentiles is, as it were, a branch grafted into the vine, namely Christ, because from him she draws all faith, grace, holiness, wisdom, and spirit, just as a branch draws all its strength and sap from the vine. Again, although a branch necessarily takes something from the earth, yet it does not suck up that vast and unclean thing which is earthly as such, but something first refined and purged through the roots of the vine, and already turned into another, purer nature.

So the Church, through the grace of Christ, cleanses, refines and perfects every use of food, drink, clothing and earthly things, so that she is not polluted by them, but sanctified, and comes forth not earthly, but heavenly; because she uses all these things not for taste, but for the glory of God, and for her own salvation and that of others, according to the law and will of God. This is what Christ says: "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches: he who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for without me you can do nothing," John 15:4.

Hear St. Ambrose, book On Isaac, chapter 5: "Who is this, who, though she was formerly left behind in hell, now cleaves to the Word of God; who ascends through the desert — namely through this place of earth, uncultivated with briers, and overgrown with the thorns of our sins — like a shoot of the vine, raising herself upward, like smoke born of fire and seeking the heights? Then, besides, she is fragrant with good works, and that odor breathes the sweetness of pious prayer, which, like a sweet ointment of pious supplication, is fragrant; because it is composed of the petition of things eternal and invisible, not of bodily things; but above all she is redolent of myrrh and frankincense, in that she is dead to sins and lives to God."

The Second Sense, Partial: Concerning Christ and the Soul Tending toward Perfection.

The angels, says the Nyssene, Theodoret, St. Ambrose and others, and men, seeing such a soul, say as if in wonder: Who is this, how vigorous, how strong, who, though she ought to descend, because she is formed from the earth of Adam, and by the weight of her origin cast herself headlong through the depths of sins, now by a new and altogether wondrous power climbs up into the heights of virtue? She ascends, I say, from the desert of the world, where there is a solitude of virtue and holiness, where among carnal and gross men, who think and know nothing but earthly things, and among dragons — that is, demons — she dwelt and lived in peril; having passed beyond all of these, alone she courageously climbs to the high summit of perfection. She is very like a wand of smoke from the spice of myrrh and frankincense, rising up when kindled by fire; for the myrrh of bitter mortification, and the frankincense of prayer, given over to the fire of divine love, is borne upward, and like a certain rod of direction, is stretched out toward God by the fiery motion of charity: for mortification thins the weight of the flesh, which weighs down the mind; but prayer, which of its own accord is borne upward, is a spiritual lightness, by which the mind opens toward the things above: by these two, then, as by wings of lightness, the soul is carried upward.

"And all the powder of the perfumer" — because God, like a most skillful perfumer, crushes the pious soul with temptations, tribulations, sicknesses, persecutions, as with hammers, humbles her and reduces her as it were to powder, that he may test, sharpen and perfect her patience and virtues; for these, worn down as it were by so many hardships, while they are seized by the fire of charity, are the more sweetly fragrant, and are borne more directly to God like a wand of smoke: for fire penetrates them more easily when they are crushed, and passes into a certain finer nature, just as fragrant pastilles, before they are cast into censers or thuribles, are wont to be crushed, and, reduced to powder, are cast upon the coals, so that the smoke may be roused more quickly, and that sweet fragrance may exhale the more swiftly, to be drawn in by the nostrils. So St. Gregory, Cassiodorus, Bede, Philo, John the Carmelite and the rest.

Hear St. Gregory: "In the desert the holy soul lives, while, exiled from the kingdom, she dwells among beasts, that is, demons. For here, although she is not altogether forsaken by the bridegroom, yet while she is in the flesh, she is not yet admitted to a sure vision of him, since she journeys away from him through exiles and temptations; because, since she does not yet reign with him, she seems to herself to be forsaken by him. For this reason she always labors that she may ascend, that she may feel more and more him whom she deeply loves; inasmuch as, since she does not hold him perfectly while in the desert, she may refresh herself even by the desire of him, so that, strengthened thus on the way, she may at length arrive at that which she has long desired."

Gregory then adds, after some things: "Rightly, moreover, are they said to ascend like a wand of smoke, because they are said to have both the odor of a good name and the fineness of mind." He soon gives the reason why this smoke is of myrrh and frankincense: "For with myrrh the bodies of the dead are embalmed, that they may not rot, but frankincense is kindled that it may be fragrant. By myrrh, then, is signified the mortification of the flesh; by frankincense is understood the purity of prayers. The holy soul, then, while she mortifies her flesh from the rottenness of vices, while through continence she denies all the pleasures of the world, applies, as it were, myrrh to a dead body, that after judgment she may remain sound from eternal corruption. But when she kindles herself with greater desire toward heavenly things, and fervently casts out from the chamber of her heart all superfluous thoughts, she makes her heart, as it were, a censer before God, in which, while through love she gathers together virtues, she arranges them like coals in the censer, in which the mind may kindle itself in the sight of God with the fire of charity. And while she sends up fervent and pure prayers to God, she draws forth, as it were, the smoke of spices from the censer, that before her beloved it may be sweetly fragrant, and may stir her neighbors to his love."

Finally, Gregory notes that it is called "the powder of the perfumer," not "the perfume," and gives the reason: "For we make perfumes when we gather virtues together in the heart. But when we more carefully re-examine our own virtues through each single work, lest anything remain uncultivated in our works, lest a vice lie hidden among the virtues; then without doubt we pound the ointments of the virtues, as it were, into powder, so that our works may be the cleaner, the more finely we do not cease to distinguish them from every stealthy inroad of vices. Minds of this kind make themselves delightful to their beloved through his grace, and, while they separate themselves from all worldly din, they compose within themselves a place in which the bridegroom may rest."

Therefore the holy soul, offering herself to God as a holocaust, through prayer as through frankincense, and through mortification as through myrrh, and through all the powder of the perfumer, that is, through almsgiving and whatever other virtue kindled by the fire of charity, ascends straight up to God, and exhales to him the most fragrant incense as an odor of sweetness, by which God is delighted and fed.

Further, by "the desert," first, he notes the world and worldly men. First, because, as Richard of St. Victor says, the world is barren and dries up, and has no fruit; because it does not know Christ, and cannot receive the Holy Spirit. Second, because, as the same author adds, its lovers are deserted, because they are forsaken by God, and because they themselves forsake God. And so through this desert the pious soul ascends, insofar as she separates herself from the fellowship of the wicked, and passes over in love to the good, and imitates them, insofar as she advances among those who are deserted by grace, and among those who are descending. Third, because, as the same author adds, it forsakes itself (and its own lovers), and fails in itself; for daily, along with time, the joys of time pass away, and as many days as there are, so many of the day's joys pass by. Whence, when the perfect soul despises these joys, and tends toward the heavenly and true joy, she ascends through the desert.

But Hugh of St. Victor: "The world," he says, "is a desert because of its abundance of evils and its want of goods." Again he says that a wicked heart is a desert, because it has no cultivation, and it germinates harmful things, and beasts dwell in it. Whence St. Bernard, sermon 59 among the lesser ones: "The repentant soul," he says, "ascends through the desert — namely, a land pathless and without water — by calling to mind her sins."

Second, by "the desert," Rupert understands the solitary life; Bede, holy conversion: "which, separated from the enticements of the world, is devoted only to the searching of God's law, and to the observance of the heavenly precepts; which, hungering and thirsting for justice, feeds only on the manna of the heavenly word, and is given drink from the fountain of life, which flows from the spiritual rock, according to that: My soul has thirsted for you; my flesh for you, in how many ways! In a desert land, and one without a path, and without water: so have I appeared to you in the sanctuary, Psalm 62:2. Such is the life of religious."

Third, Hugh of St. Victor, book 1 of the Erudition of Theology, chapter 3: "The desert," he says, "is a good heart, because it is far from noise and tumult, and is not trampled by the frequent traffic of earthly actions and thoughts, but, remaining green and flowering, it brings forth the buds of the virtues, and there the turtledove, the Holy Spirit, sings; and the voice of man is not heard, nor of anything pertaining to man."

All these things show that God works great and excellent things through humble things and humble people, both in the works of nature and, still more, of grace. Second, Cassiodorus: the holy soul, he says, is called a wand of smoke, because she is slender and delicate, made fine by the disciplines of the Holy Spirit, subtle, not having the grossness of carnal desires. So too St. Gregory. Therefore the pious soul ought to be upright and fine, that she may stretch and extend herself into heaven: "As the wand is upright and slender, drawn out lengthwise," says Hugh of St. Victor, book 2 of the Erudition of Theology, chapter 110: "because it tends only upward, it must be upright, and because the way is narrow, slender, and because it is long, drawn out. Likewise, it is not a wand of wood, insensible and hard, but of smoke, which has appearance, but not substance. For when it is seen, it seems to be something; when the hand is laid upon it, nothing is found. So every good man seems here to be something by the appearance of the flesh, but is not so here by love. Likewise, smoke ascends from fire, because desire comes from love. And what kind of smoke? From the spices of myrrh. The perfumer is Christ, the perfumes are the virtues, the myrrh is the mortification of the flesh, the frankincense is the devotion of the mind; the whole powder of the perfumer is the multitude of all the virtues."

Cassiodorus: the holy soul, he says, is called a wand of smoke, because she is slender and delicate, made fine by the disciplines of the Holy Spirit, subtle, not having the grossness of carnal desires. So too St. Gregory. Therefore the pious soul ought to be upright and fine, that she may stretch and extend herself into heaven: "As the wand is upright and slender, drawn out lengthwise," says Hugh of St. Victor, book 2 of the Erudition of Theology, chapter 110: "because it tends only upward, it must be upright, and because the way is narrow, slender, and because it is long, drawn out. Likewise, it is not a wand of wood, insensible and hard, but of smoke, which has appearance, but not substance. For when it is seen, it seems to be something; when the hand is laid upon it, nothing is found. So every good man seems here to be something by the appearance of the flesh, but is not so here by love. Likewise, smoke ascends from fire, because desire comes from love. And what kind of smoke? From the spices of myrrh. The perfumer is Christ, the perfumes are the virtues, the myrrh is the mortification of the flesh, the frankincense is the devotion of the mind; the whole powder of the perfumer is the multitude of all the virtues."

Third, St. Bernard, sermon 59 among the lesser ones, takes this of the ascent of the sinning soul through penance: "The penitent soul," he says, "ascends through the desert, by calling her sins to mind. She ascends like the wand, by humbly confessing those same sins. Which confession is rightly said to be made like a wand of smoke, because, like smoke from a censer through many openings, it is drawn out through the many kinds of sins. And it should be noted that, although smoke never has brightness, it can nevertheless sometimes have odor. That this smoke of confession has a certain odor of piety is hinted at from what follows: from the spices of myrrh and frankincense, and of all the powder of the perfumer. Confession ought always to be accompanied by myrrh and frankincense, that is, by mortification of the flesh, and prayer of the heart: for the one without the other profits little or nothing. For he who mortifies the flesh and neglects to pray is proud." And, a few things being interjected, he adds: "And all the powder of the perfumer. After the recollection and confession of sins, after mortification and prayer, the fruit of almsgiving must be shown. These are rightly called powder, because they are made of earthly substance; and of the perfumer, because they give off a most sweet odor."

You may ask what the wand of smoke from the spices of myrrh, frankincense, etc., symbolically signifies. First, Richard of St. Victor understands by the wand of smoke humility, which ascends, because it alone exalts those who cultivate it. The bridegroom, then, is likened not to a rod, but to a slender wand, so that the swiftness of ascending may be noted: "For wands," he says, "which grow thick as they grow, are not led up too high, but wands which grow more quickly and upward are more slender and smaller." To this purpose serves the fact that balsam, which is a most fragrant and most excellent liquid (as is certain to us from the definite report of those, says Titelmann, who have seen that renowned garden of balsam, unique in the whole world, near Cairo in Matarea), is not gathered from trees, but from a kind of shoots or withes, in much the same way that among us those withes grow on which grapes grow, which we call "St. John's." In that same garden, too, very many other spices are gathered rather from herbs or withes, which require yearly cultivation, than from ample and broad trees.

Richard of St. Victor understands by the wand of smoke humility, which ascends, because it alone exalts those who cultivate it. The bridegroom, then, is likened not to a rod, but to a slender wand, so that the swiftness of ascending may be noted: "For wands," he says, "which grow thick as they grow, are not led up too high, but wands which grow more quickly and upward are more slender and smaller." To this purpose serves the fact that balsam, which is a most fragrant and most excellent liquid (as is certain to us from the definite report of those, says Titelmann, who have seen that renowned garden of balsam, unique in the whole world, near Cairo in Matarea), is not gathered from trees, but from a kind of shoots or withes, in much the same way that among us those withes grow on which grapes grow, which we call "St. John's." In that same garden, too, very many other spices are gathered rather from herbs or withes, which require yearly cultivation, than from ample and broad trees.

Whence St. Anselm notes that the bride sleeps in her bed, as is clear from the preceding verse, and yet, while sleeping, ascends: because, he says, at one and the same time she is both put to sleep and ascends, since the soul, as far as she is able, alienates herself from outward cares and carnal desires, and, by the advances of good work or thought, draws near to the vision of her Creator. So he himself says: but it is truer that here there is another act of the scene, in which the bride, awake, is introduced as if ascending, as I have said.

Fourth, Rupert and St. Bernard, book of the Sentences, understand by "the desert" Christian simplicity and humility, because it is forsaken by many: "For there is scarcely anyone who imitates Christ, who is zealous to do this good. Through this desert it is necessary that we ascend like a wand of smoke from the spices, since, roused by the pursuit and discipline of the virtues, we stir up our neighbors to the likeness of good conduct." These are their words.

Anagogically, St. Ambrose, on Exodus chapter 16, reads and explains it thus: "Who is this, who comes up from the desert like a shoot of the vine, kindled with smoke, made fragrant with myrrh and frankincense, from all the powders of the ointment? Grind," he says, "you too, your faith, that you may be like that soul, which stirs up in herself the charity of Christ, whom the powers of the heavens marvel to see ascending, because she ascends without offense, with gladness and joy, like a shoot of the vine, and, like smoke, raises herself to the things above, fragrant with the odor of pious resurrection, and the sweetness of faith. Beautifully, moreover, he has expressed her fineness by the comparison of powder and the mention of ointment, because in Exodus we read of a fine incense compounded of many things, Exodus 30:35: that indeed is the prophetic incense, which is the prayer of the saints, that it may be directed in the sight of the Lord, as David also says: Let my prayer be directed as incense in your sight, Psalm 140:2."

And all the powder of the perfumer.

That is, of all the virtues which shine forth in each of the faithful: "because, just as many spices of the sweetest odor," says Aponius, "reduced into one powder, are prepared by perfumers as spices for the delights of kings; and while they are many, gathered into one mass, they are rendered, when vaporized by fire, a single wand of great fragrance: so, by the unanimity of many peoples, the confession of right faith and of right reasoning is shown to render a single odor of sweetness in the sight of God, and, like a rational perfumer, it gathers the heavenly spices for the senses."

Wherefore, first, the Church, exhibiting herself to all to be looked upon or known, by her splendor invited and drew to herself all nations; hence she is compared to the smoke of fragrant spices: for smoke, ascending, falls into the sight of all who have their eyes open; but odor, into the nostrils of those who are blind, or have their eyes closed. Second, this variety of odor, that is, of the fame of all the virtues, has won everyone over to her. For one man is drawn by the odor of chastity, another by that of another virtue. Hear Bede: "The Church ascends like a wand of smoke from the spices, etc., because she is built from one out of many faithful persons: because, flourishing with diverse virtues, some, in the likeness of myrrh, are the more intent on mortifying the pleasures of the flesh; some, after the figure of frankincense, are given more particularly to frequent prayers; others toil at other fruits of good works, yet all are inflamed by the one fire of the spirit, and, like a single wand of smoke, with undivided zeal in all things, and with common devotion, seek the heights of the heavenly life."

Third, St. Anselm understands by "perfume" the virtues; by "powder," humility, because, that the virtues may please God and men, they must be adorned with humility, so that a man may reduce himself, as it were, to powder, and reckon himself to be nothing and able to do nothing.

Fourth, St. Gregory, homily 22 on Ezekiel, and Cassiodorus, understand by the powder and pulverizing of spices the fine examination of works: because, says Cassiodorus, the actions of the saints are to be considered with great discretion, and winnowed, as it were with the sieve of a most subtle consideration, lest by chance anything hard remain in them.

Fourth, and most fittingly, St. Gregory, Justus, Philo, Aponius, Bede and others understand by the wand of smoke the soul panting after heavenly things. I have already quoted St. Gregory's words on this passage above. Hear him now again, homily 22 on Ezekiel, toward the end: "Let us transcend all things through desire, that we may be gathered in mind into one. Not now through fear of punishments, not through the remembrance of vices, but kindled by the flame of love, let us burn in tears with the odor of the virtues." He adds the reason: "For the holy Church of the elect, when she raises herself from this world in holy prayers with burning love, ascends through the desert, which she forsakes; but how she ascends, he adds: Like a wand of smoke from the spices. Smoke is born of incense, which signifies prayer: smoke is wont to bring forth tears. And so the smoke from the spices is the compunction of prayer, conceived from the virtues of love, which prayer is nevertheless called a wand of smoke; because, while it asks only for heavenly things, it advances so straight, that it is by no means bent back toward the seeking of earthly and temporal things out of earthly zeal. It is called a wand, moreover, and not a rod, because sometimes, in the ardor of compunction, the force of love glows with such fineness, that not even the soul itself, which was illumined enough to have it, can comprehend it. Rightly, indeed, is it added, of myrrh and frankincense: for they offer the sacrifice of myrrh and frankincense who both mortify the flesh, and kindle, in the sight of the Lord, the fragrant victim of their love; myrrh, because they torment themselves, and by tormenting preserve themselves from vices; frankincense, indeed, because they love the vision of God, to attain to which they burn ardently to the marrow, and show themselves to him in holy virtues."

The Third Sense, Principal: Concerning Christ and the Blessed Virgin.

Rupert holds these to be the words of Christ, admiring and celebrating the humility of the Blessed Virgin, as if to say: You say (like Abraham): I am dust of the earth, such as the wind scatters, the breeze carries away; and he says: No, but the powder of the perfumer, or the perfumer's powder, the powder of myrrh and frankincense, such as the perfumer, the Holy Spirit, compounds from the best frankincense, which is sweetness of mind; and from the most approved myrrh, which is the mortification or incorruption of the flesh.

You say: I am foul smoke before the divine eyes, such as rises failing from the furnace or the smoke-vent, and, ascending, fails; and he says: No, but smoke from the spices of myrrh and frankincense, such as it is fitting should ascend from the golden censer before the golden altar, even to the mouth and sense of smell of the Lord. Such smoke, indeed such a wand of smoke, you, O blessed Mary, breathed forth a sweet odor to the Most High, instructed and made fine by heavenly disciplines; such did you ascend through the desert, that is, having a soul very much alone. These things Rupert says almost word for word.

Further, the Blessed Virgin ascends like a wand of smoke of myrrh, frankincense and all the powder of the perfumer: because daily, through very many acts equal to the habits of her grace and virtues (for she cooperated equally with divine grace, so that, when she had degrees of grace intense as a hundred, she elicited acts intense as a hundred, and so she merited another hundred degrees, and this by continually doubling), she wondrously grew and advanced in mortification, in prayer, and in the other virtues, especially in humility, which the powder of the perfumer represents, so that at the end of her life, in grace and merits, she far surpassed all men and angels, even the cherubim and seraphim gathered and taken all together, as Francisco Suárez and others teach.

Again, St. Jerome, volume 9, epistle 10 to Paula and Eustochium, on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, adapts these words to her: "Which festival, indeed," he says, "just as the Blessed Mary is incomparable to all other virgins, so it is incomparable to the festivals of all the saints; and it is to be admired even by the angelic powers. For which reason, from the person of the citizens above, the Holy Spirit, marveling at her ascension, says in the Canticle: Who is this who comes up through the desert, like a wand of smoke from the spices? And rightly, as a wand of smoke, because slender and delicate, because made fine by divine disciplines, and burned up within, as a holocaust, by the fire of pious love, and the desire of charity. As a wand, he says, of smoke from the spices, doubtless, because she was filled with the odors of many virtues, and, flowing from her, a most sweet fragrance was fragrant, even to the angelic spirits. Now the Mother of God ascended from the desert of the present age, a rod once sprung from the root of Jesse; but the souls of the elect marveled, for joy, who she might be, who even surpassed the dignity of the angels in the virtues of her merits."

Note that this epistle is not St. Jerome's; some think it is Sophronius's. Baronius, volume 1, in the year of Christ 48, chapter 10, asserts that it belongs to neither, especially because it seems to have been written after the times of Nestorius, since its author doubts whether the Blessed Virgin was assumed into heaven both in body and in soul, whereas this very thing is certain.

Finally, all that has now been said, attribute above all to the most sacred humanity of Christ; for this is the first and foremost bride of the Word, as I said in the Proem, chapter 2.

Verse 7. Behold Solomon's couch: sixty mighty men surround it, of the mightiest of Israel.

The Hebrew: behold the couch of him who is Solomon's (that is, behold Solomon's couch, as our version, the Septuagint, the Chaldean, and the rest render it; to signify the greatness and excellence of Solomon, "of him who is" is added), around which are sixty strong men of the strong men of Israel; the Septuagint: sixty mighty men of the mighty men of Israel; Vatablus: sixty heroes of the heroes of Israel. The Syriac translates: giants; for these were the mightiest. He alludes to Solomon's bodyguard, who kept watch over him both as he went about and as he rested at home or in bed, just as the Swiss guard escorts and keeps watch over the Pontiff and princes. He numbers them at sixty, either because they were precisely that many, or because this number is perfect, says Honorius: for it is made up of six, which is composed of its own first three principles, namely unity, two, and three, or of a double three, and of ten, which is the first composite number: for the first nine numbers each consist of single digits, e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., whence they are called digits; but ten, that is 10, is composed of a unit and a cipher 0, and the first ten is the source of the other tens, namely 20, 30, 40, and of the hundreds, 100, 200, 300, etc., and of the thousands, 1000, 2000, 3000, etc. For if you double, triple, or quadruple ten, you produce 20, 30, 40; but if you multiply ten by ten, you produce 100, 200, 300; if by a hundred, you produce a thousand, two thousand, three thousand.

Again he alludes to the thirty mighty men of David, who are listed in 2 Kings 23:24 at the end, whom Solomon seems to have doubled, so that they numbered sixty. Whence at Jerusalem, next to the royal palace, or the palace itself, was the house of the mighty men. See Adrichomius, in his Description of Jerusalem.

Aben-Ezra thinks these are the words of the bridegroom, who is reproaching the bride for walking alone, as if to say: I, Solomon your bridegroom, go about attended by sixty mighty men, and do you dare to walk alone through the desert? Luysius of León, on the contrary, thinks these are the words of the bride, who is answering those who marvel at her own approach, so that they may turn their eyes from her to the bridegroom borne in his litter, and admire his magnificence and the pomp of his sixty mighty men. But the Fathers and commentators generally take these words, just as those of the preceding verse, as spoken by those who meet the bride, celebrating her beauty and magnificence; or else, as Theodoret and Gregory of Nyssa, hom. 6, hold, as spoken by the friends of the bridegroom, to kindle the bride's love for the bridegroom, as if to say: So great is your beauty, O bride, that your bridegroom Solomon has set sixty mighty men as guards for you at your couch, lest anyone snatch you away from him, or harm or afflict you in any way.

The Chaldean, taking the couch to mean Solomon's temple, and the mighty men of Israel to mean the priests, renders it after the Jewish manner thus: "When Solomon, king of Israel, built the house of the Sanctuary of the Lord in Jerusalem, the Lord said in his word: How beautiful is this house of the sanctuary, which has been built for me by the hands of King Solomon, son of David, and how beautiful are the priests at the time when they stretch out their hands, and stand at their station, and bless the people of Israel; and the blessing surrounds them like a high and strong wall, and in it all the mighty men of Israel prevail and prosper."

St. Gregory, Cassiodorus, Bede, Theodoret, Philo, and almost all the rest, nearly to a man, take Solomon's couch to mean the Church, especially of the Gentiles, in which, as in a couch, Christ, who is the true Solomon, that is, the peaceable king, rests. But because the Church is the bride, and the bride is not the couch but rests in the couch, it is therefore more fitting to take the couch to mean the city, first Antioch, then Rome: for at Antioch St. Peter first set up the pontifical see, and there he sat for seven years; whence there the faithful were first called Christians, Acts 11:26. But after seven years he transferred the see from Antioch to Rome, and there thereafter, in living and in dying, he established it firmly, and appointed as his successors St. Clement, St. Linus, St. Cletus, etc.

The meaning, then, is as if he said: the couch, that is, the place in which Christ and the Church dwell and rest, was formerly Antioch, then Rome; for there the Roman Pontiff St. Peter, the vicar of Christ, sat with his priests and clergy, and there, by dying, he established and firmly settled the pontifical and apostolic see: wherefore the Roman Church is the mother, teacher, and nurse of all the other churches spread throughout the whole world. For this reason Christ assigned and assigns to her sixty mighty men, that is, very many distinguished pastors, doctors, and outstanding saints, to guard and defend her unblemished faith, lest any error creep into the Church; just as he assigned to the primitive Church of Antioch the apostles and other teachers, who condemned and refuted the creeping error of the Judaizers concerning the observance of the ceremonies of the Mosaic law, Acts 15:28. But to the Roman Church he gave from the beginning the most valiant pontiffs, cardinals, priests, and faithful, who fought most valiantly for the faith of Christ against Nero, Trajan, Decius, Diocletian, etc., for three hundred years, and sealed its truth with their blood and martyrdom.

For to St. Peter, who established the papacy at Rome, and to his successors, Christ said and promised: "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," Matthew 16:18. Hence Christ gave a wondrous strength to almost all the Roman pontiffs to guard the faith and defend the Church, as is clear from ecclesiastical histories and the lives of the popes; wherefore they are rightly called the mightiest of Israel, because just as Jacob, wrestling mightily with the angel and prevailing over him, was called by him Israel, that is, one who has dominion with God, Genesis 32:28: so every holy pontiff, strengthened by Christ, holds dominion over tyrants, hell, and demons, and thereafter, through fervent prayers and vows, over God himself, so that he may rightly be called Israel. Let so many Leos and Gregorys be an example, unconquered in virtue and outstanding in holiness.

Hence Rome is fittingly said to be named as if from ρωμη, that is, strength and might; whence too Rome was formerly called Valentia, as Solinus testifies at the beginning of his Polyhistor. Hence again God established the Church at Rome, that it might be better fortified: for the city of Rome, if you consider its situation, is most strongly fortified; for on one side it is fortified and girded by the double sea, the lower and the upper, on the other by the Apennines and the Alps, as by an almost insuperable rampart. The safest seat of the Church, therefore, is Rome, so that in it, as in a couch, she may rest secure with Christ guarding her. See Bosio, On the Signs of the Church.

As therefore, in verse 1, he called Jerusalem and the Church of Jerusalem the couch, in which one sleeps in private (for this is what the Hebrew משכב, mischab, signifies), so here he calls Antioch and the Antiochene Church, and the Roman Church as it was just beginning and as it were still an infant, מטח, mitta, that is, a bed stretched out and spread wide (for נטח, nata, is to stretch out, to spread), because indeed, while Peter sat there, he extended the faith of Christ and the Church through Asia, Cappadocia, Bithynia, Pontus, etc.: but the Roman Church, now grown larger and magnificent, he calls in the following verse a litter. Both, however, are attended by sixty mighty men.

Antioch, then, first, and afterward Rome, that is, the Roman Church, is the couch in which Christ and the universal Church of all nations rests, because in her faith, doctrine, and rule she sleeps securely. And thus the Fathers are to be understood, such as St. Gregory, Philo, St. Thomas, etc., when they take the couch to mean the Church, namely that they understand the first and foundational church, that is, the Antiochene and the Roman, which the mightiest defend — both angels, indeed archangels, her guardians, and pontiffs, prelates, and doctors, and saints both heavenly and earthly.

Now hear Cassiodorus: "Solomon's couch is called the holy Church, because in her the saints of God, once the tumults of vice are lulled to sleep, delight in the embrace of the true Peaceable One. The sixty mighty men are the doctors, who either fortify the Church by preaching, or desire, by contemplation, to arrive at the heavenly beatitude. The number sixty consists of six and ten: six signifies the perfection of a work, because God perfected his works in six days; ten signifies the reward and prize which will be given to the elect at the end; whence also those who came into the vineyard are said to have received a denarius. But these doctors who guard the Church are called not merely mighty, but of the mightiest of Israel, namely of all those who believe in Christ and love him, who is called Israel, that is, one who sees God."

Morally, note here that fortitude is above all required in pontiffs, prelates, and princes: first, whereby they may tame their own passions, lest they allow themselves to be drawn away from what is right by fear, or love, or avarice; second, whereby they may nobly resist the unbelieving and the impious, according to that word, Sirach 7:6: "Seek not to be made a judge, unless you have strength (with manly courage and vigor) to break through iniquities"; third, whereby they may severely chastise and root out the errors and vices of the people.

Whence Jethro gave this counsel to Moses, Exodus 18:21: "Provide out of all the people men who are able, and fearing God, in whom there is truth, and who hate avarice, and appoint from among them rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, and rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens, who may judge the people at all times."

Symbolically, St. Ambrose, in his book On Isaac, chapter 5, takes the couch to mean Christ; for in Christ the Church and the holy soul rest: "Because true rest is owed to her in Christ," says St. Ambrose, "for Christ is the couch of the saints, in whom the hearts of all, wearied by worldly battles, find rest." Hence it is said, Revelation 14:13: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." And of St. Stephen it is said, Acts 7:59: "He fell asleep in the Lord." And Psalm 4:9: "In peace, in the Selfsame (that is, in the Lord, says St. Augustine), I will sleep and I will rest."

But Philo of Carpasia understands Christ's couch to mean the sepulcher, which the mighty men of Israel guarded, that is, the soldiers who guarded the sepulcher.

Second Partial Sense. Concerning Christ and the soul tending toward perfection.

Christ's couch is the holy mind, which sixty, that is, very many mighty men, accordingly surround and guard: sometimes angels, as Aponius holds; sometimes doctors and superiors, as St. Gregory and Cassiodorus hold; sometimes saints, as Philo holds; saints, I say, both the living and those who have finished their life, that is, the blessed in heaven: for these guard us by their merits, words, and examples. But above all, the couch of Christ, who is Solomon, that is, the Peaceable King, says Bede, is the quiet soul set apart from the tumults of the world, which, once the waves of the passions are tamed, imitates the tranquility of eternal peace.

So too Philo of Carpasia: "Whatever bride," he says, "purges and empties her heart of the anxieties of the world, and fills it with divine love, prepares a bedchamber for her bridegroom Christ Jesus, and rests with him from every disturbance of human affairs." By the sixty mighty men he understands the apostles and the martyrs.

Hear St. Gregory: "Solomon," he says, "that is, the peaceable one, is Christ, of whom it is written, Ephesians 2:14: 'He himself is our peace, who has made both one.' We make a couch for Solomon, therefore, when we cease altogether from the anxieties of the world, while we gladly rest in the desire of Christ alone, and, so that he may rest with us, we cleanse our heart from all earthly desire. Now the number ten, if it is multiplied by the number six, of course sixty is completed. By ten, then, we understand the Decalogue of the law; by six we understand this whole span of time, which we see revolves in six working days. By the sixty mighty men, therefore, we understand all the perfect ones who were before us in the Church; who, while they fulfilled the ten precepts of the law, the more spiritually, so the more strongly, in six days, as it were completed the number sixty. These surround Solomon's couch, because they fortify with words and examples the holy mind in which Christ rests, and by these they drive away the enemies coming to the entrance of the mind." See the same St. Gregory, book 7 of the Morals, chapter 8.

Allegorically, Christ's couch, says Aponius, was the cross, for on it, dying, he himself rested and fell asleep, and he desires that the bride, that is, the holy soul, take rest with him upon the same, and rest as it were in a couch, so that she may be like him and his consort, that is, a companion of the same yoke: for who would fear the cross, when on it he has Christ lying beside him, defending and strengthening him? The cross, therefore, is the couch, on account of union with Christ, and a sure confidence fixed in his help and grace. In short, in the cross and in the love of the cross is the rest of the saints.

The mighty men who guard it are the angels, for these stand by those who suffer, to strengthen them, indeed to instill in them a thirst for suffering still more. These are of the mightiest of Israel, that is, of the foremost angels, whom God sends to martyrs and to those in tribulation, to supply them with immense strength and courage against the fears which the devil brings on, and to overcome whatever hardships, just as he sent Raphael to the afflicted Tobias, who said that he was one of the seven who stand before the Lord, Tobit 12:15. So Elisha, surrounded by the army of the Syrians, saw the camps of angels coming to his protection; whence he said to his servant Gehazi, struck with fear: "Fear not: for there are more with us than with them," 4 Kings 6:16. So Jacob, fearing Esau coming to meet him with armed men, saw the camps of angels fighting for him; whence he called the place Mahanaim, that is, the camps of God, Genesis 32:2. So the angels fought for Moses and the Hebrews against Pharaoh and the pursuing Egyptians, and sank them in the Red Sea; whence Moses said to the trembling Hebrews: "Fear not: stand, and see the great things of the Lord which he will do this day," Exodus 14:13. This is what David sings, Psalm 33:8: "The angel of the Lord shall encamp (in Hebrew חונה, chone, that is, pitches camp) round about them that fear him, and shall deliver them."

Tropologically, the couch in which the soul rests peacefully is prayer, for there she enjoys her bridegroom, and, failing from herself, is joined to him with her whole affection; there in turn Christ sends into the soul peace, strength, grace, and all his gifts. Wherefore the demons strive with all their effort to disturb those who pray, and to call them away from prayer; but angels assist those who pray, who break the power of the demons and keep those who pray steadfast in prayer, as St. Nilus teaches, in his treatise On Prayer, chapter 44 and following, and chapters 69 and 75.

Again, Christ's couch is charity, which the mighty men of Israel defend, that is, all the virtues, especially mortification, which brings the sword to the thigh, that is, cuts off and slays the concupiscences of the flesh. Again, the sixty mighty men are good thoughts, which whoever continually summons to himself keeps away all evil thoughts, and defends charity. So the three Anonymous authors in Theodoret: "The sixty mighty men," they say, "are effective thoughts, which by divine power guard on every side the soul prepared for the rest of God, against the deceptions of wicked spirits: for reason, which presides over the five senses, taken together with the senses themselves, makes up the number six. But when he who rules the senses by reason fulfills the divine precepts, which are ten in number, he completes the number sixty, living by virtue, as has been said. Of the mightiest of Israel these are, altogether the notions of a mind truly seeing God, out of which those effective thoughts for accomplishing good consist."

Further, "it is no ordinary fortitude of soul," says St. Ambrose, book 1 of the Offices, chapter 39, "which contends in an implacable battle against all vices, unconquered amid labors, brave amid dangers, rather unyielding against pleasures, hard against enticements, to which it knows not how to lend an ear, nor (as they say) to bid welcome, which disregards money, which flees avarice as a kind of blemish that unmans virtue: for nothing is so contrary to fortitude as to be conquered by gain, etc. Let it not be tempted by desires, lest it be broken by fear; for virtue is consistent with itself, so that it may vigorously pursue all vices as poisons of virtue."

Moreover, Christ's couch is obedience and the obedient soul, such as, above all others, was the Blessed Virgin's; whence Aponius: "Solomon," he says, "is interpreted peaceable, Israel one who sees God with the mind. And who else is peaceable but Christ? He built himself a bed in the Virgin Mary, since he is proved to rest also upon the soul obedient to him. But sixty ministries of angels are shown, of whom it is said: 'Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him,' Matthew 4:11: because through each of the bodily senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, five times twelve (that is, in the consecrated number sixty) glorious mysteries are fulfilled in her. But that he said 'mightiest' shows that the saints can do more than the demons. That they hold swords teaches that they always keep the precept of the same Creator. That they are most learned in wars, he says, so as to show that, through the good of holiness, the doctors are the more able to foresee the wicked snares of the demons for the guarding of souls, than the demons are able to devise arts for doing harm. 'Of the mightiest of Israel' shows that these ministries belong to that army which always sees the face of the Father in the heavens. And in saying that each one's sword is upon his thigh, he taught that the holy angels are girded with spiritual weapons against each of the princes of vices, who besiege the aforesaid senses, on account of their nocturnal and hidden snares."

From which it is clear that Aponius, by the mighty men of Israel who guard the soul, understands the saints, both angels and doctors.

Symbolically, Christ's couch is sacred Scripture, says Theodoret, in which God enters into a mystical sleep with the soul, for there, he says, the soul, receiving the seeds of divine teaching, conceives and travails with pious desires, which at last she brings forth and puts into action: for those who devoutly read sacred Scripture feel that through it the light of God and holy impulses are breathed into them, so that they may disdain earthly things and pant with their whole heart for heavenly things. This couch the heretics assail, but the mighty men of Israel defend it, namely the doctors excelling in knowledge, and the saints excelling in virtue, who rout them with the sword of the word of God.

Anagogically, Bede: the couch of the blessed soul, he says, is heavenly glory and beatitude, in which she most happily rests and will rest for all eternity: so Gregory of Nyssa, hom. 6, and from him Psellus and Richard of St. Victor, who adds: "The mightiest of Israel, that is, of those who contemplate and seek God with the mind, and whose spiritual desires were the more fervent, surround this couch: for, kindled by vehement desires, they go about it on every side and seek entrance, that they may taste this rest and enter into it to some degree; and this is their circling, and around this couch the course of their desire." But Psellus: the sixty mighty men of Israel, he says, surround the couch, that is, the glory of Christ, that is, all the saints who are truly of Israel, and who are able to see God: these are called sixty because the Israelite people is divided into twelve tribes and parts; but since to each of these parts, which together make one Israel, five mighty men are assigned, namely the five senses armed for battle through mortification and temperance, then it plainly appears that there are sixty mighty men out of the one Israel.

The couch in which Christ, and Christ's deity espousing to itself humanity, rested for nine months, is the womb of the Blessed Virgin, so Aponius: so too the bosom of the Blessed Virgin was Christ's couch, in which he, already born an infant, often rested and slept peacefully; which therefore sixty mighty men attended, that is, very many angels adoring Christ their God and venerating his mother, and guarding and protecting both against the snares of the demons, of Herod, of the scribes, etc. But Rupert, by the sixty mighty men, understands sixty patriarchs and leaders, who defended Israel, from which the Blessed Virgin and Christ were born, against whatever enemies, whom he himself enumerates one by one.

To this purpose is that word, Psalm 18:6: "He has set his tabernacle in the sun, and he himself, like a bridegroom, coming forth from his bridal chamber"; and that word, Sirach 24:11: "In all things I sought rest, and I shall abide in the inheritance of the Lord. Then the Creator of all things commanded, and said to me: and he who created me rested in my tabernacle."

VERSE 8. ALL HOLDING SWORDS, AND MOST SKILLED FOR WARS: THE SWORD OF EACH ONE UPON HIS OWN THIGH BECAUSE OF NIGHTLY FEARS.

ALL HOLDING SWORDS, AND MOST SKILLED FOR WARS: THE SWORD OF EACH ONE UPON HIS OWN THIGH BECAUSE OF NIGHTLY FEARS (the Arabic has: horrors). The Septuagint: all holding the sword, taught for war, each man his broadsword upon his thigh, from dread in the nights: they read אחזי ocheze, that is, holding, grasping; but with other points they read אחוזי achuze, that is, seized by the sword, as if to say: They hold and grip the sword so tightly and skillfully that they seem to be seized by it; whence Vatablus: all are fit for the sword and trained for war, each one having at his thigh a sword because of the fear that arises in the nights.

Further, the Chaldean renders it, and paraphrastically explains it thus, concerning the priests of the old law: "Further, the priests and Levites, and all the tribes of Israel together, take hold of the words of the law, which are compared to a sword, and they weigh and wield them like strong men skilled in war, and upon each one of them circumcision is marked in their flesh, just as it was marked in the flesh of Abraham, and they prevail, and are strengthened in it like a strong man who is girded with a sword upon his thigh, and therefore they do not fear harmful spirits and demons, who walk about in the night."

He magnifies the strength of the sixty strong men who surround Solomon's little bed, saying that they are girded with swords, and know best how to fight and do battle with the sword, as men trained in arms by long practice of warfare, as if to say: that the bridegroom and bride may rest securely in their little bed, sixty strong warriors armed with swords keep watch around it continually, so that at the slightest fear or stirring of the enemy — indeed at any noise, which easily arises at night — they may brandish and grip them.

The sword by which the angels defend the Church is their wondrous power and strength; whence Aponius: "He instructed," he says, "the holy angels against the individual princes of vice, who besiege the aforesaid senses, girded with spiritual arms because of their nightly and hidden ambushes." The sword by which the apostles and apostolic men, the pontiffs and doctors, defend the little bed of Christ, that is, the Roman Church, is the word of God, says Paul, Heb. 4:12: "For the word of God is living, and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword, and reaching even to the division of soul and spirit," etc., as the same says, Eph. 6:13. This, then, dispels the nightly fears, which in the night, that is, in the darkness of unbelief, ignorance and impiety, heretics and uninstructed and impious Christians stir up, who chiefly lay ambushes for the bishops and prelates of the Church: for once these are overcome, they easily overcome the rest of the faithful — so Cassiodorus, Philo, Justus, and St. Gregory, book X of the Morals, chapters 3 and 4; hear him: "Nightly fears," he says, "are the hidden ambushes of temptations, but the sword upon the thigh is watchful custody pressing down the enticement of the flesh. Lest, then, a hidden and sudden temptation should steal in, it is necessary that the sword placed over it as a guard should press upon our thigh: for holy men are so certain of hope, that nevertheless they are always suspicious of temptation, since it is said to them, Ps. 11: 'Serve the Lord in fear: and rejoice unto him with trembling,' so that exultation is born of hope, and trembling is born of suspicion."

Tropologically, the sword upon the thigh is, first, mortification and continence, or chastity, which cuts off the movements of the flesh and of lust, which resides in the loins between the thighs: wherefore it signifies that bishops and pastors ought to excel in both. Whence St. Ambrose, book X on Luke, chapter 22: "It is the sword of the passion," he says, "that you may strip off the body, and that from the spoils of the slain flesh the sacred crown of martyrdom may be purchased for you;" and St. Gregory: "What," he says, "do we understand by the sword but the rigor of one's manner of life, and what by the thigh but the appetite of the flesh? Therefore all the elect, who have already advanced to the perfection of life, always carry the sword upon their thigh, because by the rigor of their manner of life they continually break the appetite of the flesh, lest the enemy, whom they fear in the night of this world, coming suddenly, should find a soft entrance, and through the softness of pleasure lead them, the more easily the more pleasure-loving he finds them, to graver sins." See the same, book III of the Pastoral, chapter 33. The same, book XIX of the Morals, chapter 29: "It is not said," he says, "all having, but holding swords, because, namely, it is not only wonderful to know the word of God, but to do it: for he indeed has, but does not hold, the sword, who knows the divine utterance but neglects to live according to it; and he is no longer able to be skilled for wars, who exercises not at all the spiritual sword which he has: for it is not enough to resist temptations."

Finally, St. Jerome, tome III, letter 140 to Principia: "This passage," he says, "I think you understand very well, and that you, girded with the sword of Christ, do battle. But that you may know that virginity always has the sword of chastity, by which it cuts off the works of the flesh and overcomes pleasures, even the error of the pagans imagined virgin goddesses armed. Peter too girded his loins, and held a burning lamp in his hands." Whence, concluding concerning Christ, he adds this: "In his glory, therefore, and comeliness, that is, in the beauty and loveliness of his divinity, mortifying the works of the flesh, and born of a virgin, he was the prince of virginity for future virgins."

Moreover, secondly, the sword is prayer, by which the nightly fears are put to flight, which the devil sends upon the faithful through tribulations, scruples, anguishes, and pressures; whence Jeremiah, Lamentations 2:19: "Arise," he says, "give praise in the night, at the beginning of the watches: pour out your heart like water before the sight of the Lord." Thirdly, the sword of the faithful is the love of God; whence Richard of St. Victor: "Upon the thigh," he says, "of delights, or of carnal pleasures, they have the sword of love because of the nightly fears, that is, because of the hidden lapses into sin: for if they do not love, through blindness and ignorance they fall into many faults: for love begets knowledge, and you beware of sins regarding him whom you love."

Symbolically, Psellus takes the sword for the sign of the cross; for by this the devil is struck down and put to flight, just as enemies are put to flight by the sword. Finally, Rupert, applying this to the Blessed Virgin, takes the strong men of Israel for David, Joshua, Judas Maccabeus, and the other princes who most valiantly defended and fought for Israel. He adds the reason, namely: "Because the devil wished to cut down and root out the good root or tree, which was the family of Abraham, to whom the promise of the blessed seed had first been made, by the barbarous swords of the nations or of impious kings: whence the sacred histories are full. For this reason there was then a time of war, for this reason there was then need of material swords, that the family of Abraham might be defended, that the root of Jesse might be defended, that the family and root of David might be defended, I say, and fought for, until you, Blessed Virgin, should be born, the little bed, as has already been said, of the true Solomon."

To the Virgin, by the strong men of Israel he takes David, Joshua, Judas Maccabeus and the other princes, who most valiantly defended and fought for Israel. He adds the reason, namely: "Because the devil wished to cut down and root out the good root or tree, which was the family of Abraham, to whom the promise of the blessed seed had first been made, by the barbarous swords of the nations or of impious kings: whence the sacred histories are full. For this reason there was then a time of war, for this reason there was then need of material swords, that the family of Abraham might be defended, that the root of Jesse might be defended, that the family and root of David might be defended, I say, and fought for, until you, Blessed Virgin, should be born, the little bed, as has already been said, of the true Solomon."

Morally, note "most skilled for wars"; for it signifies that the prelates of the Church ought to be in wisdom, prudence, and every virtue by which we fight against heretics, demons, and vices — not raw recruits, but trained and perfect men; whence St. Cyprian, book IV, letter 2 to Antonianus, praises the pontiff St. Cornelius, because he ascended step by step through each of the ranks to the summit of the pontificate: "He did not," he says, "come suddenly to the episcopate, but having been promoted through all the ecclesiastical offices, and having often earned merit before the Lord in the divine ministrations, he ascended to the sublime height of the priesthood through all the ranks of religion." For this reason the Council of Trent, session 23, chapter 11, decrees that orders be conferred upon clerics with intervals of time between them: "That they may thereby be more carefully taught," it says, "how great is the weight of this discipline, and may exercise themselves in each office, according to the bishop's prescription, and that in the church to which they will be attached, unless perhaps they are absent for the sake of studies; and thus may they ascend from grade to grade, so that in them, with the age of life, merit and greater learning may increase; which an example of honorable character, and assiduous ministry in the Church, and greater reverence toward the presbyters and higher orders, and a more frequent communion of the Body of Christ than before, will most fully attest."

Wherefore St. Gregory, book IV, letter 53, gravely admonishes Childebert, king of the Franks, on this matter, and rebukes the fault of a sudden leap: "It has come," he says, "to our notice that, when bishops die, certain men from among the laity are tonsured, and ascend to the episcopate by a headlong leap. And he who was not a disciple is made a master by inconsiderate ambition. And since he has not learned what he might teach, he bears the priesthood only in name: for he continues in his former manner of speech and action as a layman. How, then, will he be about to intercede for the sins of others, who has not first wept over his own? For such a pastor does not defend the flock, but deceives it, because, while shame prevents him from urging upon others what he himself does not do, what else is it but that the Lord's people remain to be laid waste by plunderers, and from there meet their destruction, whence they ought to have had the great support of a saving protection?" Moreover, he shows by a military example how depraved and perverse this is: "For it is certain that you do not set a man over the army as its leader, unless his labor and his proven fidelity have been established, unless the virtue and diligence of his past life have shown him to be fit. But if the army is entrusted to be governed to none but men of this kind, what sort of leader of souls ought there to be may be well gathered from the consideration, or comparison, of this matter. But it is shameful for us, and we are ashamed to say it, that priests seize for themselves a leadership, who have not seen the beginning of the religious warfare."

VERSES 9 AND 10. A FERCULUM KING SOLOMON MADE FOR HIMSELF OF THE WOOD OF LEBANON: ITS PILLARS HE MADE OF SILVER, A GOLDEN RECLINATORIUM, A PURPLE ASCENSUS: HE PAVED THE MIDST WITH CHARITY, FOR THE DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM.

The Chaldee understands by ferculum the temple of Solomon, which was a type of the Church: for thus he renders it: "The temple of the sanctuary King Solomon built for himself of cedar wood, and juniper, and pine, which are brought from Lebanon; and he covered it with purest gold. And after he had finished it, he placed in its midst the ark of the testimony, which was the pillar of the age; and in its midst were two tables of stone, which Moses had laid up there at Horeb, which were more precious than refined silver, and than fine gold, and he spread out and overshadowed above it a veil of hyacinth and purple."

For ferculum, in Hebrew it is אפריון appirion, which the Septuagint render with the consonant-matching word φορεῖον, from φέρων or φέρειν, that is, to carry: thus ferculum is so called from ferre (to carry); ferculum, therefore, is a carrying-thing, by which some person is either borne and carried by bearers lifting it upon their shoulders, or is conveyed by horses or mules. The Hebrews render appirion as torus, or the marriage-couch, in which the bridegroom and bride abide; they will have it so called from fruitfulness, because in it offspring are begotten: for פרה para is to bear fruit; hence appirion is a fruit-bearing couch. Hence the Vatican codices of the Septuagint and St. Ambrose, book III On Virgins, read, "a bed King Solomon made for himself"; R. David renders it, "a bed by which brides are carried"; R. Solomon, "an honorable bridal chamber"; the Syriac, "a throne"; the Arabic, "a building."

Wherefore here by lectum understand the vehicle of a bed, or a litter, say Luysius of León, Sanchez and others, in which a soft cushion is spread after the manner of a bed, which has both the softness of a bed, and at the same time the majesty of a throne, says Genebrardus. For this is what φορεῖον signifies, that is, ferculum: for ferculum signifies three things: first, a carrying-vehicle, or litter; second, a chariot and triumphal throne, as Nyssen, Theodoret and the other Greeks understand it here; third, a carrying-conveyance arranged for a procession. These three things are applicable to this passage, and this ferculum seems to comprehend in itself these three, that is, the offices of these three.

Further, some, as Sanchez and Gislerius, hold that the lectus spoken of in verse 7 is the ferculum; better do others distinguish the bed, in which the bridegroom lies at night, guarded by sixty strong men because of the terrors of the night, from the ferculum, in which by day he was carried about for a procession: for lectus regards nocturnal rest, ferculum the daytime procession. Solomon, therefore, just as in the preceding verse he set forth the couch of his household bed for nocturnal rest: so here he sets forth the royal litter, or triumphal chariot, in which by day he was carried through the city, and displayed his magnificence and glory to the people.

Less correctly, therefore, does Aben-Ezra interpret appirion as a magnificent palace; and others (whom St. Gregory, Rupert and Richard of St. Victor favor) as the ferculum by which dishes are brought to the table: for the Hebrew appirion, in Greek phoreion, in Latin ferculum, is properly a carrying-thing, by which a procession is customarily made; whence Suetonius in the Life of Caesar says: "At his Pontic triumph, among the fercula of the procession he displayed a placard of three words: I came, I saw, I conquered" — that is, among the carrying-conveyances of the triumphal procession, under which name are comprehended idols, spoils of the enemy, crowns, engines, and the rest, which are customarily carried in a triumphal procession; just as Titus, in his triumph over Jerusalem and the conquered Jews, carried about the golden candlestick, adorned with seven golden branches, as we see represented at Rome on the Arch of Titus.

And Livy, book I, says: "He himself, a man magnificent in words, and no less a displayer of sacred things, carrying the spoils of the slain enemy general suspended upon a ferculum fashioned fitly for that purpose, went up to the Capitol."

Hence sacred fercula are so called, by which the images of the gods, or the images of the saints, and especially the Holy Eucharist, are magnificently carried and borne about.

For reclinatorium, in Hebrew it is רפידה rephide, which the Syriac, Vatablus and others render as stratum or pavement, better does our author render reclinatorium, and the Septuagint ανάκλιτον, that is, a leaning-place, namely the rear part in the litter, or chariot, where, leaning back upon it, the bridegroom and bride recline gracefully and peacefully. For ascensum, in Hebrew it is מרכב merchab, that is, a vehicle, a seat, a chariot: the Septuagint and our author here render it ascensum, but, Leviticus chapter XV, verse 9, they render it stragulum, and, Habakkuk chapter III, 7, equitatum.

Whence, first, some, as St. Gregory, Philo, Hortolanus, by merchab, or ascensum, understand the steps by which one ascends to the ferculum or vehicle; and by these purple steps they hold to be mystically signified the sufferings and martyrdoms, or the labors and blood, by which the ascent is made to eternal glory. Second, Genebrardus, Sanchez and others understand the covering of the vehicle, or the canopy, which rises above the silver pillars, or is stretched out; whence the Syriac and Arabic render it, covering, or veil of purple: thus Theocritus, Idyll 15, describing the ferculum of Arsinoe and its veil:

"And over it purple tapestries." Third, properly by ascensum you should understand the seat or throne, upon which the bridegroom and bride went up and sat: for this is properly called merchab, and this is customarily purple: for purple, being soft, affords a soft seat, and is itself the garment and covering of kings and princes. The grammatical sense, therefore, is, as if he said: Ferculum, that is, a splendid litter, or a magnificent chariot for procession, Solomon made for himself and his bride, whose material was the cedars of Lebanon, whose sides the silver pillars adorned, whose reclinatorium was of gold, whose seat was of purple.

Ferculum signifies the Roman Church, now grown ample and magnificent, and presiding, after the manner of Solomon, over the other Churches scattered throughout the whole world, through the Roman Pontiff. For just as in verse 1 he called the Church, shut up in Jerusalem and Judea, and as it were sleeping, mischab, that is, a little bed, then in verse 7 he called the Church of Antioch, gathered from Jews and Gentiles, and the Roman Church being born under St. Peter at Rome, and lying hidden in the darkness of unbelief, מטה mitta, that is, a bed stretching and spreading itself out among the neighboring nations, but by night, that is, secretly and covertly, "because of the terrors of the night" from the Jews and Gentiles persecuting her: so here he calls the Roman Church, now as it were shining and gleaming in the clear light of day, indeed presiding, and triumphing over unbelief and tyrannies, ferculum, on account of her greatness and magnificence, which she attained especially in the times of Decius and Diocletian, through the martyrdoms, holiness, and miracles of so many illustrious pontiffs, cardinals and faithful, such as St. Cornelius, Sixtus, Urban, Marcellus, Laurence, Sebastian, Cecilia, Agnes, etc., and through the conversion of so many Roman senators and princes, and at last of Constantine the Great himself, who, the first Christian emperor, made all Rome Christian, and in it built, as it were, royal fercula, such royal basilicas as are the Lateran, St. Peter's, St. Paul's, St. Lawrence's, Holy Cross, etc.: nay, he even subjected to it, as it were, the whole world, when by his own example and command he made it Christian.

Ferculum can also be said to be the magnificent conveyance, upon which the Roman Pontiff, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, borne on the shoulders of bearers, attended by all the cardinals, bishops, prelates, and the whole clergy and people, carries about the sacred Eucharist in solemn supplication. For this honor is bestowed not so much upon the Pontiff, as upon Christ, whose vicar the Pontiff is, and whom he carries about in the Eucharist, and sets before the people to be venerated and adored.

By this ferculum, then, is depicted the magnificence of the Roman Church; and at the same time by the word ferculum it is suggested that the pontifical Chair and the Roman Church are not bound to the city of Rome, but are movable, and, after the manner of a ferculum, can be carried elsewhere, as two hundred years ago it was translated to Avignon, and there it remained fixed for 60 years, and at the end of the world, when Rome, returning to paganism, shall expel the Pontiff, he will then transfer elsewhere the seat and assembly of his faithful, as I said on Apocalypse chapter XVIII.

The Roman Chair, then, and the Roman Church, is the ferculum, in which, in his vicar the Roman Pontiff, Christ resides: whence it is said to be made of the cedars of Lebanon, that is, most firm and incorruptible: for the cedar does not feel rot, and "eternity commends the cedar," says Pliny. Hence, though heretical bishops have sat in the Chair of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, who had corrupted the faith and the Church, such as Nestorius, Eutyches, Peter the Fuller, Macedonius, etc., yet in the Roman Chair, from Christ down to now, through sixteen hundred years, no heretical pontiff has sat, Christ so providing for the unblemished faith of the Church.

The silver pillars denote the doctors and prelates, especially the cardinals, who, as hinges and pillars, both uphold and adorn the See and the Roman Church, while, by the brightness of wisdom equally as by the purity of life, they shine forth after the manner of silver, and by word and example resound throughout the city and the world.

The golden reclinatorium is the faithful and devout people of the Romans, conspicuous for gold, that is, for golden piety and religion, in which Christ sweetly rests and reclines: for wondrous is the inclination of the Roman people toward piety and devotion. I indeed have seen no nation more inclined to the duties of religion. Whence there is scarcely a day in the year on which somewhere in Rome the solemn feast of some saint is not celebrated, with ample indulgences, ornaments, the harmony of musicians, and a great concourse of people.

The ascensus, that is, the purple seat, says Justus of Urgell, is the vast and, as it were, immense multitude (Bozius numbers three hundred thousand) of most valiant martyrs, who at Rome, from St. Peter down to Constantine, poured out their blood for the faith and the Church, upon which, most joyfully, in the seat of his companions and sons (for Christ is the father and prince of martyrs), Christ reclines. Whence also the Blessed Virgin, Christ's mother, chose for herself a place at Rome among the martyrs, when, under Pope Liberius, appearing to John the Patrician, she bade that a basilica be built for her on the Esquiline, which today is called, from its magnificence, St. Mary Major: for on the Esquiline was the slaughter-place of the martyrs; whence near it was the "Ursus pileatus," where we read in the Martyrology that very many of the martyrs were either slain, or buried, and in memory of this a church was formerly built there in honor of St. Bibiana, now handsomely restored by Urban VIII, is to be seen.

If by ascensus you prefer to understand the veil, or the canopy of the ferculum, or Christ's triumphal chariot, this best represents the martyrs, who with their blood veil, cover and adorn Rome and the Roman Church, and, triumphing over unbelieving tyrants, gloriously ascended into heaven, and from there watch over and defend the Roman Church: so St. Gregory, Cassiodorus, Nyssen, Philo, Justus, Aponius, Bede and the rest, who by ferculum understand the Church, namely the primatial or Roman Church, in which, as in a magnificent ferculum, Christ and the universal Church, as the bride of Christ, resides and triumphs.

Hear St. Gregory: "The woods of Lebanon are said to be imperishable; ferculum, then, King Solomon made for himself of the woods of Lebanon, because, according to the grace of his foreknowledge, Christ built the holy Church out of the saints who are to abide forever. Its pillars he made of silver, because he gave to that same Church preachers, whom, that they might sustain her by their examples, he strengthened with great uprightness of justice, and, that they might instruct her by their preachings, he adorned with the brightness of eloquence as it were with the splendor of silver. He made the reclinatorium of gold, because, while it shone in the hearts of the perfect, he showed them the power of his divinity through contemplation. In which contemplation, while he showed them the beauty of the heavenly joys, he composed for them, as it were, a reclinatorium of gold, because he set there a place in which, being refreshed, they might rest. And this reclinatorium is rightly said to be of gold, because wisdom is better than all riches, and all things that are desired cannot be compared to it."

He then interprets the purple ascensus thus: "To this reclinatorium one arrives by many labors, one ascends by many tribulations, so that, if it be necessary, even the shedding of blood is permitted. Therefore the ascensus is rightly said to be purple: for while the holy martyrs, for the sake of eternal life, delivered their bodies to torments, while they patiently endured scourges, goads, fires, swords and other innumerable torments, did they not ascend to that reclinatorium, that is, to the blessed life, by a purple ascensus?"

Symbolically, the ferculum of the divinity is the humanity of Christ: for this is, as it were, the litter in which the deity of the Word reclines and rests, says Philo Carpathius; but the ferculum of both is the sacred Eucharist, in which the whole deity and humanity of Christ is contained, and in supplications is carried about for the glory of Christ, and the devotion of the faithful, that they may give thanks to God, and repel imminent dangers, and obtain from God every grace and blessing.

This ferculum was made of the woods of Lebanon, that is, of the most pure blood of the Blessed Virgin, free from all corruption: for Lebanon in Hebrew is the same as whiteness, and shining purity. The silver pillars are the wisdom of Christ, his eloquence, his power of speaking and preaching, sonorous and effective after the manner of silver. The golden reclinatorium is the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which Isaiah, chapter XI, verse 2, teaches rested upon Christ, and in which, in turn, as if reclined, Christ found rest.

The purple ascensus is the bloody sweat of Christ, his passion, death and martyrdom: so Bede, who says that by this is signified that no one enters the Church, except imbued with the sacraments of the Lord's passion.

Again, the ferculum, that is, the litter, and, as it were, the triumphal chariot of Christ, was the cross, says Aponius: for this was made of the imperishable woods of Lebanon; whence even now, in its relics, which are kept in many places, it endures. For on the cross Christ triumphed over sin, death, the devil and hell, according to that saying of the Apostle, Colossians II, 14: "Blotting out the handwriting of the decree that was against us, which was contrary to us, and he took it out of the way, fastening it to the cross: and despoiling the principalities and powers, he hath led them confidently away openly, triumphing over them in himself."

The pillars of the cross were humility and obedience, according to that saying: "He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross," Philippians II, 8. The golden reclinatorium was his unconquered patience and magnanimity, leaning upon which he calmly bore and overcame all blows, injuries, sorrows. The purple ascensus was the purple cloak, with which the Jews clothed him in mockery as king of the Jews, or rather the shedding of all his blood, which covered his whole body with blood and empurpled it, according to that saying, Isaiah LXIII, 1: "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra? this beautiful one in his robe, etc. Why then is thy apparel red, and thy garments like theirs that tread in the winepress? I have trodden the winepress alone."

II, 8. The golden reclinatorium was his unconquered patience and magnanimity, leaning upon which he calmly bore and overcame all blows, injuries, sorrows.

Ascensus purpureus was the purple cloak, with which the Jews clothed him in mockery as king of the Jews, or rather the shedding of all his blood, which covered his whole body with blood and empurpled it, according to that saying, Isaiah LXIII, 1: "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra? this beautiful one in his robe, etc. Why then is thy apparel red, and thy garments like theirs that tread in the winepress? I have trodden the winepress alone."

HE PAVED THE MIDST WITH CHARITY.

The Hebrew is, its midst incensed with charity, because, to be sure, this chariot of Christ's cross is fiery, and burning with charity; for it breathes and darts forth nothing but love toward God and men; whence by this fiery chariot he himself, as a true Elijah, carries, nay snatches up, not only himself, but also his elect, into heaven.

Somewhat differently does Aponius adapt this to the cross. For thus he says: "The ferculum of the cross was made of cedar wood, upon whose silver pillars the true and immaculate body, untouched by the contagion of sin, grows white, and the glowing splendor of gold gleams for the glorious soul, in which even now the Word of God is proved to have his reclinatorium, and the corporeal and regal sense of the deity flashes forth."

Tropologically, Nyssen and others by the silver pillars understand the doctors, shining with the brightness of heavenly eloquence; by the purple ascensus, the prelates and princes, for purple is their glory; by the golden reclinatorium, the mind upon which all the powers of the soul lean and rest. Cassiodorus, however, and St. Gregory here by the golden reclinatorium understand heavenly glory, in which is the eternal rest of the saints. The same St. Gregory, however, homily 15 on Ezekiel, understands charity, in which the saints find rest in this life: "With the silver pillars," he says, "is the golden reclinatorium, because through this, which is clearly spoken by the holy preachers, the minds of the hearers receive the splendor of inward charity, in which they may rest."

The Hebrew is, its midst incensed (or spread) with charity, that is, the whole life and person of Christ breathes nothing but charity; for as he did not live for himself, but for us; so he did and suffered all things out of charity: so St. Gregory, Cassiodorus, Bede, Theodoret, Nyssen, Philo Carpathius and others. On account of the daughters of Jerusalem, because those who in the faith, through faith admire and celebrate together the beauty of Christ and of the Church, or those who study to please the bridegroom Christ, and to recline and feast together with him. He proceeds here to the other things which the expositors give elsewhere concerning the Wise Man.

On account of the daughters of Jerusalem, because those who in the faith, through faith admire and celebrate together the beauty of Christ and of the Church, or those who study to please the bridegroom Christ, and to recline and feast together with him.

He proceeds here to the other things which the expositors give elsewhere concerning the Wise Man.

...in apostolic manner, blazing, and preaching Christ crucified, is called a ferculum of Christ: for it carries about the name of Christ, his faith and worship, through all nations; whence the ferculum of Christ was St. Paul and the apostles, says Theodoret, and Hortolanus, and Gislerius, nay, Christ himself, Acts IX, 15: "He is to me a vessel of election, to carry my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel": for he himself was a cedar of Lebanon, lofty and proud, while, being a Jew, he persecuted the Church, but afterward, cut down and hewn, he became an incorruptible ferculum and triumphal chariot of Christ, according to what he himself says, II Corinthians II, 14: "But thanks be to God, who always triumpheth (that is, causeth to triumph) us in Christ Jesus, and manifesteth the odor of his knowledge by us in every place: for we are the good odor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish." His silver pillars were the wisdom and effectiveness in preaching Christ crucified, according to that saying: "But we preach Christ crucified: unto the Jews indeed a stumbling-block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God," I Corinthians I, 23. The golden reclinatorium was his unconquered constancy of soul, his modesty, his gentleness, leaning upon which he bravely and calmly sustained and overcame all labors, difficulties and adversities. The purple ascensus was his continual passion, his blows and hardships, in which he gloried: "God forbid," he says, "that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world," Galatians VI, 14. Read the whole of II Corinthians XI, chapter, where he enumerates his blows and sufferings as it were his trophies and triumphs. He paved the midst with charity, because he breathed and belched forth nothing but the fires of love, even toward the Jews most hostile to him. See Romans chapter IX, 1.

Wherefore St. Chrysostom, homily 22 to the People, near the beginning, gives Paul these praises: "Paul, an earthly angel, a heavenly man, a receptacle of the Holy Spirit, incomparable in zeal, great in charity, the anxious guardian of the churches of God, the orator of piety, the guide of the weak, the groomsman of believers, the refutation of the Jews, the dragnet of us all, after mortification a teacher, and after death a herald, who shows us how it behooves us to ascend into the heavens." The same, book II On Prayer: "Paul, that insatiable worshipper of God, the common parent and progenitor of the servants of Christ, that guardian of the whole world, who out of men makes temples of Christ." See what I said concerning the praises of St. Paul in the Preface to his Epistles, and in the Idea of St. Paul, which I prefixed to the Acts of the Apostles.

Aptly Nyssen, homily 7, notes that God is in the just in various ways, namely as in a place, as in a house, as on a throne, as on a footstool, as in a chariot, and as on a horse receiving the bit: but here he is described as being in a pious soul as in a litter, of the most excellent material and workmanship, inasmuch as that soul now scarcely lives for itself, but forsakes God dwelling living within her, according to that saying:

Symbolically, Hugh of St. Victor, from the Miscellany II, book I, chapter 120:

"The ferculum," he says, "is any congregation of the saints, carrying souls to the eternal banquet; the silver pillars are those who most strongly carry others by the example of their work, and illuminate them by the light of preaching; the golden reclinatorium is the splendor of eternal happiness, in which one reclines and rests from all labor; the purple ascensus is this, that one comes to the brightness of that rest only through tribulation."

Anagogically, this ferculum signifies the Church of the saints triumphant in the heavens, whose foundational pillars, gates, measures and gems St. John graphically depicts, Apocalypse XXI, 12. God made this on account of the daughters of Jerusalem, that is, the blessed, both angels and men: on account of the angels, that he might restore their ruin; on account of men, because Christ suffered and died for them.

SECOND PARTIAL SENSE, Concerning Christ and the holy soul.

First, a pious mind, especially one devoted to mortification and bearing the cross of Christ, is a ferculum of Christ, according to that saying: "Always bearing about the mortification of Jesus in our body, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies," II Corinthians IV, 10; and: "I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus in my body," Galatians VI, 17; and: "You are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body," I Corinthians VI, 20. Hence St. Ignatius Martyr was called θεοφόρος and χριστοφόρος, that is, God-bearer and Christ-bearer; thus he calls himself in the title of his Epistles.

Second, Hugh of St. Victor, Erudit. Theol., from the Miscellany I, LX, says: "The ferculum of Solomon is a heart exercised in the pursuit of virtue: the ferculum is the word of wisdom; whence it is carried from the mouth to the ear. The little bed is the contemplative mind: this ferculum ought first to be of the woods of Lebanon through purity, and the incorruption of truth; of silver, in precepts and promises: in the brightness of silver, a clean manner of life, in the sonority, a sweet promise. It has gold through heavenly wisdom, which does not rust in eternity, but glows red in charity. It has purple, when it preaches the passion. An ascent to glorification. In the midst charity is spread, on account of the daughters of Jerusalem, which is set before the tender and the weak for the obtaining of salvation: who is so tender that he cannot love? for if you cannot do the rest, yet you can love, that you may belong to the ferculum of Solomon."

Thirdly, a mind, with charity, with zeal for souls, and spi-

...of the Apostle: "I live, now not I: but Christ truly liveth in me," Galatians II, 20.

Symbolically, first, St. Ambrose, book III On Virgins, after the beginning, reads thus from the Septuagint, and thus explains it: "A bed King Solomon made for himself of the woods of Lebanon, its pillars of silver: a golden reclinatorium, its back strewn with gems." "What," he says, "is this bed, but the form of our body? for in the gems the appearance of air is shown forth in its brightness; in the gold, fire; water, in the silver: earth, through the wood: of which four elements the human body consists, in which our soul reclines, if it exist neither harsh as the mountains, nor, on the dry ground, deprived of rest, but, exalted above vice, rests propped up by the wood."

Second, three Anonymous writers in Theodoret understand by this ferculum the doctors, by whom, as by a chariot, Christ is carried for the teaching and perfecting of men; by the silver pillars they understand the sayings of the Lord; by the golden reclinatorium, the peaceful tranquility of the mind; by the purple ascensus, the heavenly fatherland, in which Christ the king, as a peaceful Solomon, makes all the saints purple-clad, that is, kings. Here belongs the exposition of Rupert, who, understanding by the ferculum the instrument by which dishes are brought to the table, understands by it Holy Scripture, which supplies every kind of feast to the soul.

Third, St. Anselm by the ferculum understands the judges, who are of the cedars of Lebanon, because incorrupt; and the silver pillars, because they resound strongly with true judgment; and the golden reclinatorium, because they shine with charity and wisdom; and the purple ascensus, because, with Christ ascending in them, they are prepared for whatever persecutions.

Tropologically, first, our Sanchez by the ferculum of Christ understands mortification, by which all love of the world is cut off from the soul, so that it may become the bride of Christ, and yield to him all its love: whence in it Christ pleasantly rests: wherefore St. Basil, in the Longer Rules, rule 6, teaches that self-denial is the base and foundation of the spiritual life: "because it is," he says, "the total forgetfulness of the whole of the life above, and a withdrawal from one's own pleasures." Its two pillars are hatred of self, and love of God; the reclinatorium is patience; the purple ascensus is progress in every virtue.

Second, Hugh of St. Victor, book I, Erudit. theol., chapters IX and IXI, distinguishes three fercula: "Let us set down," he says, "three, that is, the little bed of Solomon, and the ferculum of Solomon, and the chariot of Pharaoh; and let us understand by the little bed of Solomon a heart resting in the sweetness of contemplation; by the ferculum of Solomon, a heart carrying itself about in the exercise of good works; by the chariot of Pharaoh, a heart resting in the desire of carnal things."

Third, Richard of St. Victor, taking with Rupert the ferculum by which dishes are brought in, understands by it the holy soul, which feeds and refreshes Christ: "While he," he says, "is delighted by her good works, pursuits and desires, as it is written: My people hath filled me with voices, hath filled me with odors; he also refreshes her members by example, prayer, teaching, counsel and converse." This was made of the woods of Lebanon, that is, of the elect, who grow and bear fruit through Christ and in Christ, who is called Lebanon, that is, a whitening, on account of purity. The four pillars are the four cardinal virtues, which support the soul, and make it splendid before God and men, after the manner of silver. The reclinatorium is a pure conscience, in which Christ reclines and rests. It is said to be golden, because refined by the fire of tribulation. The purple ascensus is the desire of heavenly things, by which the mind ascends to God, Christ and the saints. These things Richard sets forth at length, which I have contracted into a few words.

THIRD PRINCIPAL SENSE, Concerning Christ and the Blessed Virgin.

The ferculum of Christ was the womb and the arms of the Blessed Virgin, in which she herself carried Christ; likewise the manger and the cradle stood as a movable and carrying ferculum of Christ; the pillars were the two arms of the Blessed Virgin, with which she clasped Christ; the reclinatorium was her bosom and breast, in which Christ reclined; the purple ascensus was her mind, her head, and her golden and reddening hair, which encircled, cherished and veiled Christ resting in her bosom. The rest, which I have said concerning the Church and the holy soul, apply with even greater right to the Blessed Virgin, only the name being changed.

HE PAVED THE MIDST WITH CHARITY, FOR THE DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM.

ON ACCOUNT OF THE DAUGHTERS. — Refer this both to charity, which came immediately before, and to the whole ferculum. Again, the word media is not the ablative singular belonging to the force of charitate, as St. Gregory, St. Bernard and Cassiodorus have supposed, but is the accusative plural, signifying those things which were the middle or inner parts of the ferculum: for in Hebrew it is תוכו tocho, that is, the middle of it was spread, or incensed, or burned up with its love, namely both of the ferculum and of the purple ascensus, that is, of the seat or throne, as if to say: The throne of the ferculum, on which the bridegroom sat, was surrounded with purple; but in the middle, where the place of the bridegroom was, it was strewn with fiery stones representing charity, or at any rate its middle, that is, the middle pavement of the ferculum, was strewn with burning gems.

For constravit, in Hebrew it is רצוף ratsuph, that is, spread, or burning with love: for רצף ratsaph is compounded from צרף tsaraph, that is, to burn (whence the highest angels are called seraphim, because they burn with love of God), and רבץ raphats, that is, to be spread; whence ratsaph signifies to be spread for burning or being burned; hence רצף retseph, that is, a live coal or burning ember; רצפה ritspa is a coal kindled upon the pavement, and from there the pavement itself strewn with stone, for instance Parian or marble stone. Wherefore the Septuagint here, and II Chronicles VII, 3, and Esther I, 6, render it λιθόστρωτον, that is, paved with cut stone, in varied and tessellated work; whence here they render, its inmost part paved with tessellated stones; St. Ambrose, book III On Virgins, its back strewn with gems; the fifth edition, its midst he composed of pebbles: wherefore

First, from the Hebrew you may translate thus: he paved its midst with stones of love, namely with burning gems, such as pyropes and carbuncles, which are a symbol of the love and charity of the bridegroom and bride, equally as of the daughters of Jerusalem; whence Vatablus renders, its inmost part strewn, or covered with love; the Syriac, its midst strewn with love before the sons of Jerusalem; the Arabic, and its interior encrusted with gems, and that out of love for the daughters of Jerusalem.

Second, because the Hebrews lack cases, whereby it happens that the same noun may be rendered in any case, hence from the Hebrew you may render it thus, and the midst itself is held by one burning with love, as if to say: The midst of the ferculum is held by one burning with love, namely the bridegroom, that is, Christ. Whence the Glossa of the Hebrews on that saying, Genesis II, 5: And the Lord made to spring up from the earth, has this: "In the midst of the bridal chamber, the Messiah, son of David, who loves the children of Israel, as it is said, Canticle III, 10": He paved the midst with charity on account of the daughters of Jerusalem. For the heart of Christ was as a most burning furnace of charity: whence he himself was, more from love of us than from pain, roasted and scorched upon the cross; and on the cross, as it were upon a ferculum, in the midst of his hands, feet and side, pierced and bloodied by five wounds through the nails and the lance, as if by five purple and ardenti-

For it is established from Suidas and Varro that in former times newly-wed brides, lest they should blush, were accustomed to be carried by litter at night into the house of the bridegroom: wherefore, for honor's sake, they sat in the middle of the litter, so that the bridegroom flanked the right side, and some kinsman or best man the left.

Fourth, others with the Septuagint render it in the accusative, he strewed its midst with gems for love from the daughters of Jerusalem, understood as: to be won over to himself; for these delight in gems and a gem-studded chariot. Thus the Septuagint's version can be explained: its interior or inmost part strewn with stones (gems), obtains, understood: wins or extorts, love from the daughters of Jerusalem; or thus: in its midst he placed love or charity, that is, the image of love or charity, so as to signify that this whole ferculum was composed by Christ out of love, or for the sake of love, that he might manifest his charity to all. Some, therefore, think that in the midst of this ferculum there was placed a statue or image of charity.

Thus the Gentiles used to depict Cupid alive in their bridal chambers; whence Pausanias, at the beginning of his account of Corinth, asserts that an image of Cupid was depicted on a chariot, in the middle of whose base, he says, an image of the god of love (Cupid) emerged, with Nereids standing on either side. Alcibiades too carried on his golden and ivory shield Cupid engraved, bending and curving a thunderbolt, by which he signified that love also rules over Jove, and wrests from him his anger and thunderbolt.

Fifth, our author best renders it in the ablative, he paved the midst with charity: for since in the Hebrew no material is here expressed, by which the midst of the ferculum is strewn, except charity, it must certainly be strewn with charity.

You may ask, what is the sense of the Vulgate's version, he paved the midst with charity? First, our Sanchez takes charity for dear and lovable things, namely for gems, which entice the minds of onlookers to love of themselves, as if to say: The midst of the ferculum was strewn with most precious and most dear gems: whence the Septuagint renders λιθόστρωτον, that is, paved with tessellated stones; St. Ambrose, strewn with gems; the fifth edition, composed of pebbles. So too chapter V, 16, where the Vulgate has "wholly desirable," in Hebrew it is, he is wholly desire, and thus the Septuagint render it altogether. Thus St. John, I Epistle II, 16, says that whatever is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh or of the eyes, that is, is desirable from the flesh, or from the eyes: for the Hebrews often take abstracts for concretes; and a power, a habit, or an act for its object.

Second, others by charity understand the image of charity, as if to say: Solomon placed in the midst of this ferculum a statue of charity, as it were the queen of this sacred marriage, who joined Christ with the Church in the highest and indissoluble bond of love, by which is tropologically signified, says Sanchez, that charity, the queen of all the virtues, as the heart in the body, by which the other members live and are vigorous, has taken her seat in the midst as in her own kingdom; from whom all the virtues, which self-denial and mortification find and strip bare, have life and beauty. This makes the bridal chamber lovable, this brings with it its own natural ornaments, namely the other virtues, which, as attendants and handmaids, never depart from her side: nay, this alone performs the part of the remaining virtues. This St. Augustine best taught in his treatise On the Praises of Charity, tome IX, and adds that Solomon, a most wise man, took care to have this hieroglyphic ferculum made, for the daughters of Jerusalem to use at weddings, so that, gazing upon this form of holy marriage, roused by the sharp symbols of love and faith, they might honor and love their husbands; and that this is signified by what follows: "On account of the daughters of Jerusalem."

Third, others by charity understand the bridegroom, namely Christ, who is called charity, because he is supremely loving and lovable, as if to say: In this bridal ferculum sat in the midst Christ, as a bridegroom uniquely loving his bride the Church, so much so that he seems to be very charity itself; and indeed if by the ferculum you understand the manger or the cross, in its midst there was none but Christ, incarnate, crying, and crucified, out of love for us.

Fourth, simply and plainly you may understand by charity an image, a name, or some symbol or emblem of charity, such as carbuncles, doves, turtledoves, flames, as if to say: The midst of this ferculum's throne, or at least its pavement was strewn with the likeness of doves, or of carbuncles, or of fire and flames, which are the insignia of charity, and perhaps the very image and name of charity was carved in the pavement itself, just as in the rational of the high priest were woven the Urim and Thummim, that is, doctrine and truth, Exodus XXVIII, 30, so as to signify that the whole adornment of this so splendid a ferculum looked to nothing else than to show the love with which the bridegroom pursues the bride and the daughters of Jerusalem, that he might in turn entice them the more to love and honor her, so that this ferculum might deservedly be called one of love and charity, indeed charity itself; whence many render it, and its midst burned with burning, or was the ardor of love, or was set aflame with charity.

It seems, then, that either the seat or the pavement of this ferculum, or both, were strewn with the image of Charity, or with things fiery or bearing the appearance of fire, such as are live coals, flames, carbuncles, etc. For fire is a symbol of charity and of ardor, according to that saying, Canticle VIII, 6: "The lamps thereof are lamps of fire and flames." Hence also the Holy Spirit at Pentecost descended upon the apostles in the appearance of fire and of fiery tongues, Acts II, 3. See what is said there.

Further, Charity is painted with this figure: a maiden with a rosy face, but clothed in a burning scarlet cloak, furnished with wings, wearing on her head a golden crown set and flashing with carbuncles; her finger is adorned with a ring, radiant with pyropes; in one hand she carries a ruddy heart flashing flames, in the other a bow and burning arrows; this is the image, this the emblem of charity: and perhaps it was thus depicted in the midst of this ferculum. So much for the grammatical sense of the husk; now let us pass to the parabolic and genuine sense contained beneath it.

FIRST ADEQUATE SENSE, Concerning Christ and the Church.

Solomon, that is, Christ, paved the ferculum, that is, the Roman see and Church, with pure charity, first, because Christ's benefits overflow so greatly upon her, that all things seem to be strewn with love and charity: for in her sits the vicar of Christ, who has the fullness of ecclesiastical power over all churches and the faithful, and therefore can grant, and does grant, especially to the Roman Church, the remission of all sins, indulgences, and most ample graces: in her is the assistance of Christ and the Holy Spirit, that she cannot err in faith and religion; upon her he rains down the greater charisms from heaven; in her the basilicas and churches are full of the relics of holy pontiffs, priests, virgins, so that almost the whole Roman city is drenched with the blood of martyrs. Whence Christ, appearing to St. Bridget (as her Life has it), bade her set out from Sweden for Rome; for there, he said, the way to heaven was easier: she obeyed and set out, and from there went to heaven.

Second, because Christ instilled into the minds of the pontiffs and faithful of the Roman Church an illustrious charity, and still instills it, "on account of the daughters of Jerusalem," namely, that faithful and devout souls, as citizens enrolled in heaven, enticed by this charity of the Roman Church, might love her, honor her, follow her, and through her, as through a ferculum, be carried up from the earthly Jerusalem to the heavenly. For there is no salvation for him who is outside the Church, whose head is the Roman Church. St. Gregory the Great alone, to pass over the rest, was of such great charity, that he fed all the orphans, monks, and poor of Rome, and very many throughout all Italy, nay even beyond Italy, and in Palestine itself. In the Jubilee, all who flock to Rome from the whole world (who are numbered at several hundred thousand) are fed for three days at the expense of the Romans, and treated liberally as guests.

Again, the lavish charity of the Roman people is evident from the many hospices, orphanages, hospitals, and other pious places, in which Rome abounds, to say nothing of the daily alms of the faithful, by which are sustained all the orders of mendicants, very many nuns, boys, girls, and countless poor. I omit the dowry, which every year is given to very many maidens for marriage, the buildings and ornaments of churches, the expenses of confraternities, etc., which indeed to me, and to others who consider the slenderness of the Roman people's means, have often moved wonder, so that these works seem to be not so much those of men, as of God blessing the Roman Church. There exist printed books on this subject, in which this same thing is clearly demonstrated, and especially the book entitled: The Hidden Treasures of Rome; likewise little books written concerning the Roman jubilees. So Cassiodorus, St. Gregory, Aponius, Bede and others, who say that by these things is signified that Christ, when he suffered and was crucified for us, paved the Church with charity, because in her he kindled love of himself and of divine things. These are the tapestries of charity, says Aponius, which strew the midst of human nature and majesty, for the salvation of holy souls, and the joys of the daughters of the Jerusalem above. This is assuredly the paved charity which "beareth all things," according to the Apostle, I Corinthians XIII, 7, which, though trampled, never yields, but raises up the fallen by the example of her humility.

Symbolically, the ferculum of Christ's divinity is his humanity: the ferculum of both is the cross equally as the Eucharist; for these three are strewn with charity, according to that saying: "So God loved the world, as to give his only-begotten Son: that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting," John III, 16; and that saying: "In this hath the charity of God appeared towards us, because God hath sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we may live by him," I John IV, 9. He gives the cause in verse 16: "God is charity: and he that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him." And that saying of Christ: "I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it be kindled?" Luke XII, 49. And that saying: "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him," John VI, 57: for the Eucharist represents, nay actually presents to us to be eaten the whole deity and humanity of Christ, roasted and scorched out of love for us upon the cross: wherefore the Eucharist is pure charity and love of Christ, by which he draws to himself the daughters of Jerusalem, that is, souls devoutly communicating; but the sacrifice and sacrament of the Eucharist is celebrated and repeated most of all at Rome, inasmuch as there are more thousands of priests there, and no fewer of religious and monks, by whom, by institution, the sacred synaxis is frequented; and this is the wellspring and cause of Roman charity, which I commended a little before: nay, the order and priestly power of consecrating the sacred Eucharist

is derived from the Roman pontiff, as from the head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy: for by him are created the bishops, who ordain priests throughout the whole world. For this reason, when the Pontiff goes out from Rome, and sets out elsewhere, the sacrament of the Eucharist is always carried with him, and formerly, to bishops coming to Rome, he was accustomed to send that same sacrament to meet them, as a sign of mutual communion of faith and charity, as is clear from the letter of St. Irenaeus to Pope Victor, which Eusebius recites, book V of his History, chapter XXIV; from which Baronius gathers, in the year of Christ 198, tome II, that the Roman Pontiff was formerly accustomed to send the Eucharist to all his fellow bishops of the Catholic communion, but that those judged by him unworthy of it were shunned by all as if excommunicated, inasmuch as they did not communicate with the Pontiff of the Roman Church. Christ, therefore, on the cross, equally as in the Eucharist, is as it were the divine and boundless image of charity, so that he may more truly than Solomon be called Jedidiah, that is, beloved of the Lord, II Kings XII, 25; and he breathes and inspires the same charity into those who devoutly communicate. Whence St. Chrysostom, homily 61 to the People, says: "Let us depart from that table like lions breathing fire, having become terrible to the devil, and turning over in our mind our head, and the charity which he showed us." A type of this was the ark of the testament, whose covering was the golden mercy-seat signifying Christ, who is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world: the ark, then, was like this ferculum, in whose midst was the manna, which was a figure of the Eucharist; whence the Chaldee renders it, and among the cherubim, which were above the mercy-seat, dwelt the majesty of the Lord, who makes his name dwell in Jerusalem, more than in all the cities of the land of Israel.

The mortified soul, preaching Christ in the apostolic spirit, is a ferculum of Christ; and accordingly its midst, or, as the Septuagint has it, its inmost part, namely its heart and mind, is strewn with charity: for it is fitting that one who is eager to win souls for Christ should burn with the love of God and zeal for souls. Such was St. Paul, who says: "The charity of Christ presseth us: etc.; and Christ died for all: that they also who live, may not now live to themselves, but unto him who died for them, and rose again," II Corinthians V, 14. "Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation? or distress?" etc., Romans VIII, 35. And: "I myself wished to be an anathema from Christ for my brethren," Romans IX, 3. Hear St. Chrysostom, homily 32 on the Epistle to the Romans, in the Moral: "The heart of Christ was the heart of Paul, the tablet of the Holy Spirit, and the volume of charity, etc., which merited to love Christ so much, that no one else so loved him; who despised death and hell; who was ground down by those brotherly tears"

See the same author in the eight homilies which he wrote in praise of St. Paul, and especially in the second (they exist near the end of tome III), and in the sermon immediately following, which is on the commemoration of St. Paul concerning charity, where among other things, explaining that saying of I Corinthians IX: "I became all things to all men, that I might save all," he exclaims: "Have you seen, I ask, a soul surpassing earthly things? for he desired to present absolutely every man to God, and, as far as it lay with him, he did present all. As if he had himself begotten the whole world, so was he troubled, so did he care, so did he hasten to bring all into the kingdom of God by teaching, by praying, etc., raising up the falling, strengthening the standing, lifting up those lying on the ground, healing the broken, animating the torpid with the oil of exhortation, thundering terribly against enemies, gazing menacingly upon foes, after the manner of some excellent general, and of a physician carrying the instruments of his art." Presently he adds the reason: "For though he stood exalted at the summit of all the virtues, yet he surpassed every flame by the especial ardor of charity: for as iron cast into fire is wholly turned into fire; so Paul, set aflame with charity, became wholly charity: who, as if he were the common father of the whole world, so imitated, out of love of men, their own parents, nay surpassed all fathers, not carnal only, but spiritual too, in solicitude and piety, spending money and words and his very soul for those whom he loved."

Preachers, therefore, who, after the manner of Paul, are eager to imprint the faith and love of Christ upon the faithful, let them burn with the charity of Paul, so shall they with the same fire kindle others. Thus St. Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers, and a follower of St. Paul, when, going to preach through the provinces, he carried with him only the Gospel of St. Matthew, and inflamed all with the love of God, being asked from what book he drew forth such sweet and burning words of preaching, replied: "From the book of charity; apply yourselves to this one book alone, and you will kindle all with a like ardor": for that saying is true:

Let the orator burn, if he would set the people afire.

Morally, charity perfects all the virtues, and spreads itself beneath them and orders them rightly, and lays low all vices: whence without charity no virtue profits unto salvation, according to that saying, I Corinthians XIII, 4: "Charity is patient, is kind: charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity: but rejoiceth with the truth: beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things": so St. Anselm; whence also Nyssen here, homily 7, teaches that charity is adorned and crowned with all the virtues, whose pavement he says is virginity; for this makes them shine with the purity of the virtues, as it were with certain rays of gems.

Further, Richard of St. Victor, understanding by the middle things the indifferent works, which are middle between virtue and vice, such as eating, drinking, studying, walking, etc.: "These," he says, "ought to be strewn with charity, so that they may be done in charity and with good intention, and so that, with fraternal charity, they may be done in such a way that the weak are not scandalized or weakened by them, but so strewn, that is, done with such equity and discretion, that the soul may proceed in all these things without complaint, and may know opportunely to exercise them, and again to leave them off."

Again, St. Gregory, from Cassiodorus, taking media adjectivally, as it were an epithet of charity, judges that it is called media (middle) because, through her mediation, the daughters of Jerusalem, that is, the more imperfect souls, will arrive at the bridegroom's blessedness, if they observe charity untiringly, even though they lack the golden reclinatorium of contemplation, and the purple ascensus of martyrdom, and the silver pillars of preaching. Rupert gives the reason, who, understanding by the ferculum Holy Scripture: "He paved the midst," he says, "with charity," that is, in the midst of the Scriptures he placed the primacy of charity, because on it all the rest depend, according to that saying of Christ: "On these two commandments (of loving God and one's neighbor) dependeth the whole law and the prophets," Matthew XXII, 40. He adds the reason, that charity makes another's good her own and proper good, for instance, he says: "They are not virgins in the flesh, but the good of virginity in you, O blessed Mary, they make their own by loving it. None other but you bore King Solomon, so great a king, so magnificent: but they, by loving in you this so great privilege, become mothers of that same king. Likewise they are not martyrs, nor are they sufficient to fight among the strong, and to pour out their blood for love of King Solomon, but they love the martyrs, and by loving them, make their glory their own. I will say more: They are not gods, but by loving God, they are gods, or sons of God, as it is written: I have said, you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High."

Finally, St. Bernard, On the Steps of Humility, near the beginning, understanding this ferculum of spiritual banquets, namely of charity and the virtues, interprets media charitate as meaning that charity which is fitting to the middle ones, that is, not to beginners, nor to the perfect, but to those making progress, who are placed in the middle between both: "He paved the midst," he says, "with charity, on account of the daughters of Jerusalem, namely on account of the imperfect souls, who, while as yet they can take in less of that solid food, must meanwhile be nourished with the milk of charity instead of bread, with oil instead of wine. This is rightly described as middle, in that its sweetness is neither at hand for beginners, fear forbidding it; nor is it enough for the perfect, because of the more abundant sweetness of contemplation. The former, still needing to be purged of the harmful humors of carnal delights by the most bitter draught of fear, have not yet tasted the sweetness of milk; the latter, already weaned from milk, are more gloriously delighted to feast from the very entrance of glory: only to the middle ones, that is, those making progress, already having tasted, as it were, certain honeyed sips of charity, are they so far content with their own tenderness meanwhile. The first food, then, is that of humility, purgative, with bitterness; the second,

that of charity, consoling, with sweetness; the third, that of contemplation, solid, with strength." And, after a few intervening words, he adds pathetically: "Who will invite me to that middle and sweet banquet of charity, where the just feast in the sight of God, and delight in gladness, so that, no longer speaking in the bitterness of my soul, I may say to God: Do not condemn me, Job X, 2; but, feasting on the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, I may joyfully sing in the ways of the Lord: For great is the glory of the Lord?" Psalm CXXXVII, verse 5. But these things are more ingenious and pious, than solid and genuine: for this ferculum is not one of banquets, but is the seat, or magnificent chariot, of the bridegroom and bride: and the word media does not signify a banquet-food but a position or seat, as I have said; charity, however, can nonetheless be called media in this sense, that it is placed and spread in the middle of the ferculum.

The womb and bosom of the Blessed Virgin was a most august ferculum, bearing and carrying the incarnate Word, as I said above, and therefore paved with charity in the midst on account of the daughters of Jerusalem: because Christ, who is charity itself, breathed into the Blessed Virgin the greatest grace and charity, that she herself might bring help to the daughters of Jerusalem, that is, to devout souls having recourse to her in any difficulty: wherefore she herself is the mediatrix of God and men, as St. Bernard teaches, sermon 2 On the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin: "She herself," he says, "is our mediatrix; it is through her that we receive your mercy, O God; it is through her that we too receive the Lord Jesus into our homes." Wherefore, with great sense of piety, the Church invokes her daily: "Hail, holy Queen, mother of mercy; our life, our sweetness, and our hope, hail. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us; and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!"

Hear St. Bernard, sermon 1 On the Assumption: "Can anyone doubt that the inmost being of Mary passed wholly into the affection of charity, in whom she herself, who is of God, charity, rested bodily for nine months?" And a little after: "Nor on earth is there a place more worthy than the temple of the virginal womb, in which Mary received the Son of God; nor in the heavens a more worthy royal throne, in which today the Son of Mary has exalted Mary."

Hence from the Hebrew it can be rendered, and the midst itself is held by one burning with love, as if to say: Christ, who is wholly love and ardor, occupies the midst of the womb and heart of the Blessed Virgin, and in her sits as it were on a throne and royal seat, and diffuses his charity.

Again, the Blessed Virgin strewed the manger with charity, when she placed in it, as if on a strewn couch, Christ, who is charity itself, newly born: wherefore the manger was, as it were, a tabernacle of charity. Just as the Gentiles feigned Cupid, the god of love, as it were a winged boy, bearing a bow and arrows, so you may truly paint charity as a winged boy, lying in a manger, scattering flames of ardor: for Christ in the cradle is the hieroglyph and enticement of love; for there the great and most praiseworthy Lord became a very small and most lovable child: for what is more winning than the little one of Bethlehem winning over all, as St. Francis called Christ, out of the sweetest delights of love? Further, all the faithful and all the churches, but the Roman Church most of all, is devoted to the Blessed Virgin: whence Rome alone has built magnificent basilicas and temples in honor of the Blessed Virgin to the number of sixty-three (as many as the Hail Marys recited in the crown, or rosary, of the Blessed Virgin), and diligently frequents and devoutly worships her: wherefore, as great is her piety toward the Blessed Virgin, so in turn is the Blessed Virgin's liberality toward her, and the outpouring of her charity and graces, immense.

Verse 11. Go forth and see, daughters of Sion, king Solomon in the diadem with which his mother crowned him on the day of his espousals, and on the day of the joy of his heart.

Go forth and see, daughters of Sion, king Solomon in the diadem (the Syriac and Arabic have: in the crown) with which his mother crowned him on the day of his espousals, and on the day of the joy of his heart. — For mothers were accustomed to crown their sons when they became bridegrooms at their weddings; hence Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon, in Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis, reproaches Achilles that she had crowned her daughter for the wedding: "In vain indeed," she says, "yet as though my daughter were to be married to you, I brought her, having first crowned her." Philo also, in the Biblical Antiquities, represents the daughter of Jephthah, devoted to death by her father's vow, lamenting her virginity thus: "O my mother," she says, "you have borne your only-begotten in vain, since my bridal chamber has become the grave; all the store of oil which you prepared for me will be poured out; and the linen which my mother spun, the moth will eat; and the crown which my nurse wove will wither in its season." St. Chrysostom too, Homily 9 on 1 Timothy, in the Moralia, teaches that sons were accustomed to be crowned at weddings, and adds the reason: that it might be shown that their spirit was higher and superior to all the enticements of the flesh; for that crown signifies purity, and the innocence of a mind that has never succumbed to lust: "For this reason," he says, "crowns are placed upon the head, that they may be signs of victory, namely that beforehand they were impenetrable to lust. Thus at last they enter the bridal chamber, because indeed they have not been overcome by pleasure. But if someone, overcome by lust, has given himself over to harlots, for what reason does he go about crowned, who has bowed his neck to so foul a lust?"

This is the voice of the bride, who calls forth the daughters of Sion to go out from their houses to behold the bridegroom, who, carried magnificently upon a litter spread with love for the sake of these same daughters of Sion, or Jerusalem, and crowned by his mother with a diadem on the day of the wedding, advanced exulting and triumphant, as a new king and bridegroom: for bridegrooms, no less than kings, were accustomed to be wreathed with a crown, whether of flowers, or of foliage, or of gold, or of jewels, as Tertullian teaches in his book On the Crown of the Soldier, Brissonius in On the Rite of Weddings, Alexander ab Alexandro in Book II of the Genialium, chapter 5, and Carolus Paschalius in Book I On Crowns, chapter 16. Hence Claudian, on the wedding of the emperor Honorius, sings thus:

Do you, Hymen, choose the festal torches; do you, Grace, the flowers; do you, Concord, twine the twin crowns.

And Tertullian, On the Crown of the Soldier: "Weddings too," he says, "crown the bridegrooms." Alexander the Great went about crowned, when he himself, bridegroom of one, joined a hundred Macedonians with as many Persian women in lawful marriage, as Plutarch attests in his book On the Fortune of Alexander. The same Paschalius, chapter 17, teaches from Plutarch and others that these crowns of bridegrooms were commonly woven from asparagus and water-mint, from verbena, from fir and pine, and that they were tokens and witnesses of gladness, cheerfulness, joy, and congratulation: finally, that it was the custom for the new bride to crown the door of the husband's house with wool, according to that saying of Proverbs 31:13: "She sought wool and flax, and worked by the counsel of her hands." That these wedding crowns were notable, lofty, and as it were turreted, is shown by that verse of Lucan, Book II On the War:

And the matron, pressing her brow with a turreted crown.

Such indeed was the crown with which Alexander the Great crowned his bride Roxane, as the figure of Aelius indicates in Lucian.

Furthermore, the bride invites the daughters of Sion to this spectacle of her bridegroom to this end, that she may draw them into admiration, love, and reverence of him; hence she calls him Solomon, that is, peaceful, because he himself is about to bring to them peace, that is, tranquility, joy, riches, honors, health, happiness, and every good thing (for this is what "peace" signifies in Hebrew).

The diadem was formerly the first ensign of kings, and was nothing other than a white and thin band encircling the head: for διαδεῖν means to bind, to bind round about, whence διάδημα is a binding, a fillet; afterward, as the power, wealth, and splendor of kings increased, the band was changed into a golden, jeweled crown. "The diadem," says Caelius Rhodiginus, Book 24, chapter 6, "was a white band which was bound about the heads of kings." Liber Pater was the first to devise this royal ensign, according to Pliny. When someone had placed a laurel crown, tied with a band, upon a statue of Caesar, the tribunes of the plebs ordered the band torn from the crown, and the man led away in chains. We read that Alexander the Great once took the diadem from his own head to bind up a wound which Lysimachus had received on his brow. They say that this thing portended for him a kingdom, which also soon...

Ammianus Marcellinus relates that envy was directed at Pompey by his detractors, because he went about with his leg bound with a band on account of an ulcer, as though this were an omen of an aspiration to revolution. It is evident that among the nation of the Turks remnants of this ancient custom are still preserved even now.

Furthermore, the Chaldee, referring these words in Jewish fashion to Solomon himself, paraphrases thus: "When King Solomon came to make the dedication of the house of the sanctuary, a herald went forth in strength, and said thus: Go forth and see, inhabitants of the provinces of the land of Israel and people of Sion, the diadem and the crown with which the people of Israel crowned King Solomon on the day of the dedication of the house of the sanctuary; and he rejoiced in the joy of the solemnity of the tabernacles, which King Solomon held at that time for fourteen days."

Christ, king and bridegroom of the Church, was wreathed with a fivefold diadem or crown. First, with the robe of human nature, when with it, as with a crown, he clothed his deity in the incarnation: for among the Syrians a robe was reckoned a royal garment and a royal diadem, as Alexander ab Alexandro attests, Book I of the Genialium, chapter 28. Solomon alludes to the marriage-song of Christ and the Church composed by David his father, Psalm 18:6, where he himself, comparing Christ the bridegroom to the sun, says: "In the sun he has placed his tabernacle: and he, like a bridegroom, coming forth from his bridal chamber:" for the sun, when it rises at dawn, its rays being reflected in the nocturnal vapors and the intervening cloud, presents the appearance of a crowned head: whence it advances beautifully crowned in splendor, like a bridegroom from his chamber. Again, often beneath the sun there is such a gathering of vapors and arrangement of clouds, that the sun, shining through them, forms a halo, that is, a crown, by which it is itself girded, adorned, and crowned: so likewise the eternal Word, assuming flesh, and through it flashing forth the rays of his divinity, that flesh being as it were a translucent and gleaming cloud, went forth beautifully wreathed and crowned as with a halo and a crown: for Christ, in the incarnation, espoused to himself human nature, which he assumed in an inseparable bond of union, so that he was to cleave to it forever, and never to abandon it; and through the flesh which he assumed, he consequently espoused to himself, and united to himself, the whole of human nature, and the whole Church: for it was to this end that he assumed flesh, and went about wreathed with the diadem of flesh.

Furthermore, with this robe and crown of humanity he was clothed and crowned by his mother, that is, by the Blessed Virgin: because she, from her own most pure blood, with the Holy Spirit overshadowing her, formed the body of Christ in her womb. Add, too, that Christ, through the Blessed Virgin, as the daughter and heir of King David, would seem to have obtained the kingdom and royal crown of Israel, as it were by hereditary succession; whence the angel, alluding to this, the paranymph of Christ's incarnation, says to the Blessed Virgin among other things concerning him: "And the Lord God shall give him the throne of David his father: and he shall reign in the house of Jacob forever," Luke 1:32: for he had promised this kingdom of the Messiah, or of Christ who was to be born of David, to David, saying: "Of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne," Psalm 131:11. Thus by the diadem, in this place, St. Gregory, Bede, Alcuin, Honorius, Cassiodorus, Philo, and St. Athanasius in the Synopsis, and St. Ambrose, in On the Institution of a Virgin, chapter 16, understand the human nature which Christ assumed in the incarnation; he speaks thus: "Blessed is the womb of Mary, which crowned so great a Lord when it formed him; it crowned him when it bore him, because although she formed him without any operation of her own (for the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin, whence he himself says in the Psalm: My unwrought substance your eyes have seen, Psalm 138:16), yet by this very fact, that she conceived and bore him for the salvation of all, she placed upon his head the crown of eternal devotion, that through the faith of believers Christ might become the head of every man." Hear St. Gregory: "The mother of Christ is believed to be the blessed Mary, who crowned him with a diadem, because he himself assumed our humanity from her, as is recounted in the Gospel, and this is said to have been done on the day of his espousals, and on the day of the joy of his heart; because when the only-begotten Son of God willed to join his divinity to our humanity, when by his good will, at the fitting time, it pleased him to take to himself the Church as his bride, then, in the exultation of love, he willed to take our flesh from a virgin mother: in which, living for a time amid sorrows, he greatly exulted over our redemption." St. Gregory then raises an objection, and at the same time answers it: "But since the diadem is assumed for glory, whereas in the assuming of humanity not the glory of the Word of God but rather humility is recognized, how is he said to have been crowned with our humanity as with a diadem? But since his incarnation itself was truly our glory, because we are his members through the communion of the body, Scripture has rightly foretold the diadem of the members as belonging to the head: and so here, because he is praised by the bride, he in turn deigns to praise the bride." This is what Isaiah, foreseeing 600 years before, sang in the exultation of the spirit, chapter 61, verse 10: "Rejoicing I will rejoice in the Lord, and my soul shall exult in my God: for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation: and with the robe of justice he has surrounded me, as a bridegroom decked with a crown, and as a bride adorned with her jewels." See what is said there.

The day of the incarnation, therefore, was the day of espousal and of joy, both for Christ and for men and angels: for Christ rejoiced over his humanity, so noble, holy, and perfect, because through it he was to reconcile men to God; whence the angels, exulting, then sang: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will," Luke 2:13. This is what Zephaniah foretold in song, chapter 3, verse 14: "Sing praise, daughter of Sion: shout for joy, Israel: and rejoice, and exult with all your heart, daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away your judgment, he has turned away your enemies: the King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst, you shall fear evil no more. In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Fear not: Sion, let not your hands grow feeble. The Lord your God, strong, is in your midst; he will save: he will rejoice over you in joy, he will be silent in your love, he will exult over you in praise;" the Septuagint: And he shall rejoice over you in delight as on a solemn day: see what is said there: for in this Song, the first bride of the Word is the humanity assumed by him, whose marriage is here celebrated.

Second, just as Christ, in the first year and day of his incarnation, was crowned with the diadem of his humanity on the 25th of March, so likewise in the 34th and last year of his life, on the return of that same day, the 25th of March, he was crowned with a crown of thorns by his mother (or rather, stepmother) the Synagogue, that is, by the Jews who crucified Christ: for that Christ suffered and died on the same day on which he was incarnated, namely the 25th of March, is taught by St. Augustine, Book 4 On the Trinity, chapter 4, Epiphanius, Heresies 78 and 79, Francisco Suárez, and very many others. For in death, Christ, paying the price of our redemption, bought for himself, espoused, and joined to himself the Church, that is, us the faithful, in an act as it were perfect; whence, as bridegroom, he was then crowned with a crown, but one of thorns, because he was suffering, and making satisfaction for the thorns of our sins; whence Isidore of Pelusium, Book 1, epistle 95: "Because," he says, "on account of that curse by which the earth was penalized after the commandment was violated by us, the crop was thorny; but the Lord, in order to heal every disease in himself, had come, and for this reason he was wreathed as victor with a crown of thorns: just as, namely, illustrious and celebrated victors do, who carry in triumph that very weapon or instrument by whose aid they obtained the victory. Be of good confidence, says the Lord, I have overcome the world." Christ, therefore, wreathed and diademed with this crown of thorns as it were triumphal, as king of the Jews, that is, of those who confess and praise God, triumphed over the passion, the cross, death, sin, the demon, and hell. For this reason Christians of old were unwilling to be crowned with roses, because Christ was crowned with thorns, as Tertullian teaches in his book On the Crown of the Soldier. And Clement of Alexandria, Book 2 of the Paedagogus, chapter 5: "It is foreign to reason," he says, "that we who have heard that the Lord was crowned with thorns should ourselves, mocking in sport the venerable passion of the Lord, have our heads wreathed with flowers."

For this reason Godfrey of Bouillon, who after the recovery of the Holy Land was the first of Christians made king of Jerusalem, refused to be crowned with a golden crown, saying: "That he did not wish to be crowned with gold in that city in which Christ was crowned with thorns," as William of Tyre relates in On the Holy War, and Paulus Aemilius, Book 4 On the Affairs of the Franks, near the end. Thus this diadem, as referring to Christ's crown of thorns, is expounded by Theodoret, Cassiodorus, Aponius, Anselm, Philo,

Justus of Urgell, St. Bernard, and others. Hear Theodoret: "He calls Judea 'mother,'" he says, "insofar as it pertains to the humanity of Christ, which imposed on him the crown of charity though unwilling: for she crowned him with thorns out of contempt, but he himself, through the thorns, received the diadem of charity: for on his brow he bore ignominy, and went of his own accord to the torments of death: wherefore he called that day the day of the dispensation, and the day of the joy of his heart. For then indeed the communion of the marriage took place," namely at the Last Supper, when, a little before the passion, he instituted the marriage banquet, that is, the Eucharist, as Theodoret adds.

Furthermore, St. Athanasius, in his treatise On the Passion and the Cross, teaches that Christ was crowned with thorns for two reasons. First, that he might atone for and take away that curse of the earth: "Cursed is the earth in your work. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you," Genesis 3:17. Second, that he might take upon himself the stings of our thorns, that is, of our cares and anxieties: "For he himself," he says, "was in sorrows and cares, that we might be without sorrows, etc., and might give the tree of life in place of thorns." Hear St. Bernard, Sermon 2 On the Epiphany: "Go forth, angelic powers, dwellers of the city above. Behold your king, but in our crown, in the diadem with which his mother crowned him. But you have lacked these delights until now, you have not tasted this sweetness until now. You have his sublimity, but you have not seen his humility. Go forth, therefore, and see King Solomon in the diadem with which his mother crowned him, in the crown of poverty, in the crown of misery. For he has been crowned by his stepmother with a crown of thorns, a crown of misery, and is yet to be crowned by his own household with a crown of righteousness; when the angels shall go forth and take away from his kingdom all scandals, when he shall come to judgment with the elders of his people, when the world shall fight for him against the senseless. And the Father also crowns him with a crown of glory, as the Psalmist says: With glory and honor you have crowned him," Psalm 8:6.

The third crown of Christ was of glory, when on the third day he rose from death to life in a glorious body, and on the fortieth day ascended to the heavens, and sat at the right hand of God the Father on the throne of glory, as victor over death, and triumphing over it, diademed with divine light, according to that: "With glory and honor you have crowned him," Psalm 8:6; and Hebrews 2:9 and following: "We see," he says, "Jesus, on account of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor:" for the day of Passover, or of the resurrection, as well as of the ascension, was the day of joy and of Christ's espousal, on which, namely, Christ, no longer mortal and destined to die, as before, but immortal and glorious forever, espoused to himself the Church, both present and future, and pledged to her a like glory of resurrection, according to that, Psalm 92:1: "The Lord has reigned, he has put on beauty." Tertullian gives the final cause, in his book On the Crown of the Soldier, near the end: "That," he says, "[you, O Christian,] may emulate that crown of Christ which came to him afterward, because he too tasted the honeycombs after the gall, and he was not saluted as king of glory by the heavenly powers before he was proclaimed king of the Jews upon the cross, having first been made a little lower than the angels by the Father, and thus crowned with glory and honor."

The fourth crown was of dominion and kingdom, with which he was crowned on the day of Pentecost, when, having sent the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, he converted through them many thousands of the Jews, and subjected them to himself, and a little afterward, through the same apostles, subjugated all the nations to his faith and obedience: for then he espoused to himself, as it were by words of present consent, and joined in marriage, the Church gathered both from the Gentiles and from the Jews. For just as God, in giving the law to Moses and the Hebrews at Sinai, espoused the Synagogue to himself at Pentecost: so too Christ, in giving the new law in Sion, and in promulgating it through the Apostles at Pentecost, espoused the Church to himself. This is what Jeremiah says, chapter 2:2: "I have remembered you, pitying your youth, and the love of your espousal, when you followed me in the desert;" now the bride is the ornament and crown of the bridegroom: for, as the Wise Man says: "A diligent woman (bride) is a crown to her husband," Proverbs 12:4. The Church, therefore, which is the bride of Christ, is his crown, just as the faithful and the saints are the crown of the Church, according to that, Isaiah 49:18: "You shall be clothed with all these as with an ornament, and you shall bind them about you as a bride;" and chapter 61:10: "As a bridegroom decked with a crown," and chapter 62:3: "You shall be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no longer be called Forsaken, but you shall be called My delight is in her: because the Lord has been pleased with you, etc. And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you." Hence St. Paul calls the Thessalonians, whom he had converted, his own crown, 1 Thessalonians 2:19: "For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of glory? Is it not you, before our Lord? etc., for you are our glory and joy." And Philippians 4:1: "My dearest and most longed-for brethren, my joy and my crown: stand so in the Lord, dearest ones." So St. Ambrose, Sermon 15 on Psalm 118, says that all the saints, and all their virtues and crowns, are the crown of Christ: "What," he says, "is the crown with which Christ is crowned, but the crown of glory? Joseph had the crown of chastity, Paul of righteousness, Peter of faith; these are the crowns of individual virtues: Christ alone has the crown of glory, with which the Church has crowned him. In this crown are all crowns; for glory is not the portion of one crown, but the reward of all crowns." So too Aponius and Gregory of Nyssa, Homily 7. As many good works, therefore, as you do by the grace of Christ, so many roses do you weave into the head and crown of Christ: just as, for as many Hail Marys as you recite to the Blessed Virgin, so many roses you weave upon her head, that a rosary and crown may be made for the Virgin.

Furthermore, this crown is as much triumphal as it is nuptial and royal: for Christ, by the weapons of his eloquence and grace, subjected all nations to himself through the apostles; whence St. John compares him to a horseman, and to a white horse, Apocalypse 6:2: "And behold," he says, "a white horse, and he who sat upon it had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he went forth conquering that he might conquer," piercing all nations with the arrows of love and subjecting them to himself; and chapter 14:14: "And I looked, and behold a white cloud: and upon the cloud one sitting like the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle."

The fifth crown of Christ, nuptial as well as triumphal, will be that of the blessed in heaven: for he himself, on the day of judgment, casting down the reprobate, his enemies, into the depths, will lead his faithful and elect to heaven: and there, in a perpetual bond of nuptial love, eternal glory will be joined to them, and he will be crowned by them as with a crown of glory, according to that, Apocalypse 19:6: "Alleluia: for the Lord our God almighty has reigned. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give glory to him: for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has prepared herself, and it was granted to her that she should clothe herself with fine linen, shining and white. For the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And he said to me: Write: Blessed are they who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb;" and verse 12: "And on his head were many diadems;" and verse 16: "And he has on his garment and on his thigh written: King of kings and Lord of lords."

Furthermore, all these crowns of Christ are in his litter, that is, in the Roman Church: the first indeed, because the Roman Church especially preaches and celebrates the mystery of the incarnation of Christ, and defends it most vigorously against all the heresies of Nestorius, Eutyches, Apollinaris, the Monothelites, etc., as is evident from the Golden Epistle of St. Leo written on this subject to the Council of Chalcedon. Hence too, in Rome, in the basilica of St. Mary Major, the manger is preserved, in which Christ, laid down and bound with swaddling bands as with a diadem, was crowned: nay more, the house in which the Blessed Virgin received the message of the incarnation, and the Word was made flesh, the angels transported from Nazareth to Loreto, situated not far from Rome.

Second, because St. Helena brought from Jerusalem to Rome the holy cross, the nails, and the thorns of Christ's crown of thorns, and placed them in the basilica of the Holy Cross, which was thence named "in Jerusalem"; where I myself have beheld and venerated them at close hand, and every year they are shown to the people from on high, from a distance, and set forth for veneration.

Third, because the Roman Church constantly preaches the faith of the resurrection, and defends it against any sectarians whatsoever, as St. Gregory did, who, before the emperor, refuted and converted Eutychius, patriarch of Constantinople, who denied the resurrection; and many thousands of martyrs at Rome constantly confessed and professed the resurrection in deed, not by speaking of it, but by dying for the hope of it.

Fourth and fifth, because all the faithful nations, just as they are the crown of Christ, so too are they the crown of the Roman Church, both because they were converted by the apostles and apostolic men subject to St. Peter and the Roman Pontiff, and sent by them; and because they themselves are subject to her, and are instructed by her in faith and morals, and are directed toward the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, toward eternal happiness and glory. For this reason the Roman Pontiff is wreathed with a triple crown, that he may represent the full kingdom of Christ over all nations, which he administers as it were the vicar of Christ — namely, this is a royal priesthood and a priestly kingdom, as St. Peter says, 1 Epistle, chapter 2, verse 9. See what is said there; see also Carolus Paschalius, Book 9 On Crowns, last chapter.

Tropologically, St. Ambrose, in his book On Isaac and the Soul, chapter 5, understands by the diadem the charity with which the mother of Christ crowned him, that is, encircled and filled him on every side — namely, charity itself: "The angels," he says, "sing the wedding-song, the bride having been led even to the nuptial rest of the bridegroom, and they call the other heavenly powers, or souls, to see the charity which Christ has toward the daughters of Jerusalem. Whence too the Son of charity deserved to be crowned by his mother, according to that saying of the Apostle: God has rescued us from the power of darkness, and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, Colossians 1:13. The Son of charity, therefore, is himself also charity, not having charity from accidents, but always having it of his own substance, just as also the kingdom, of which he says: For this I was born, John 18:37: and therefore they say: Go forth, that is, go out from the anxieties and thoughts of the world, go out from bodily distresses, go out from the vanities of the world, and see what charity the peaceful king has on the day of his espousals, how glorious he is, because he gave resurrection to bodies, and joined souls to himself. This is the crown of a great contest. This is the illustrious gift of Christ's espousals: his blood and his passion. For who could give more, who did not even spare himself?" So too Theodoret and Gregory of Nyssa, Homily 7, who says: "Love has woven this crown."

Second Partial Sense, Concerning Christ and the Faithful Soul.

The faithful soul goes forth, that it may admire, honor, and imitate Christ crowned in the flesh with the crown of humility, and on the cross with the thorny diadem of patience, and may learn from him not to flee the thorny crown of mortification — whether spontaneously undertaken or otherwise inflicted — but to desire it, and to glory in it: because by these thorns harmful pleasure is pierced, and the concupiscence innate in us from Adam's sin; for the pain of thorns extinguishes love and the desire for feasting. Christ, says he, poured out his blood for you, therefore he rightly demands your blood. The devout, therefore, rejoice in thorns, saying: "We glory in tribulations: knowing that tribulation works patience." Romans 5:3. The wicked, however, rejoice in roses, saying: "Let us crown ourselves with roses before they wither," Wisdom 2:8; whence St. Peter, 1 Epistle 4:14: "If you are reproached," he says, "in the name of Christ, you shall be blessed: because that which is of honor, of glory, and of the virtue of God, and his Spirit, rests upon you;" and Christ: "Blessed are they who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," Matthew 5:10. Such was Moses, who "refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be afflicted with the people of God, than to have the pleasure of sin for a time, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure of the Egyptians: for he looked to the reward," Hebrews 11:24. "Let it be a shame," says St. Bernard, Sermon 5, on the Feast of All Saints, "for a member to become soft under a thorn-crowned head, since meanwhile all its purple is to it not so much a matter of honor as of mockery."

Furthermore, these thorns are the crown of gladness and joy, because they produce that, both in this life and in the life to come; whence St. James, at the beginning of his epistle, chapter 1:2: "Count it all joy," he says, "my brothers, when you fall into various trials," etc. For this reason St. Catherine of Siena, when two crowns were offered to her by Christ, one of thorns, the other of gold, and, the choice being given her to choose whichever she wished, but knowing that the other would be given to her after death, at once chose the crown of thorns, that after death she might receive the golden one in heaven; and she fixed it upon her head with such force that she felt severe pains in her head for many days.

As many injuries, therefore, illnesses, hunger, hardships, and sorrows as we suffer for the love of Christ, so many thorns of Christ's crown do we weave into our own head. Whence the angel of Blessed Lydwine (as her Life has it in Surius) — who for thirty years and more had been afflicted with the most grievous illnesses of head and body — appearing near the end of her life, announced to her that her crown of thorns was nearly complete, that only a little remained, wherefore she should prepare herself to suffer that; and that, once it was accomplished, the crown of patience would be complete, and therefore the crown of glory would soon be placed upon her in heaven. As he said, so it came to pass.

For this reason Richard of St. Victor, here, chapter 13, pressing upon the word "go forth," teaches that the tried and tempted ought to look upon Christ's crown of thorns; for just as this brought forth for Christ the crown of glory, so it will bring forth the same for them: "Judea," he says, "when it inflicted martyrdom upon Christ, fashioned for him a crown and glory, etc. (so too those who afflict us are the craftsmen of our crown, and are therefore to be loved, not hated). O daughters of Sion, when you suffer adversity, go forth from your imperfection and impatience, that you may bear lightly the evils brought upon you; behold your king, who suffered before you, and through his passion was crowned with glory and honor: consider the joy of your king. Set this example before yourselves." Thus Richard.

Again, the devout soul beholds Christ in the Eucharist veiled and crowned with a diadem, that is, with the species of bread as with a white band, receives him, and unites and, as it were, espouses him to herself: for in the Eucharist the nuptial banquet of Christ and the soul is celebrated, say Theodoret and Aponius.

Tropologically, the daughters of Sion, that is, watchtowers — namely, devout souls — frequently contemplate in prayer, with the mind, Christ born, having suffered, and crowned with thorns, as the bridegroom of their soul, and are wonderfully kindled in his love; wherefore it is necessary that they first go forth from the imagination and love of carnal and worldly things. "Go forth," says St. Bernard, Sermon 2 On the Epiphany, "from the sense of the flesh to the understanding of the mind, from the servitude of carnal concupiscence to the freedom of spiritual understanding: go forth from your land and from your kindred."

The Blessed Virgin, as a mother, crowned Christ with a diadem, or robe, and the most white band of humanity, which, suffering on the cross, bound up our wounds, as I said a little before; whence the Blessed Virgin invites the daughters of Sion, that is, all angels and men, to behold, look up to, and adore him, laid in the manger. Hear Rupert: "What," he says, "is that diadem? The most clear authority of prophetic truth, of which, as many as are its testimonies, so many jewels make up the diadem of Christ; on the day of his espousal, on which, from the womb of Mary, he came forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, and on the day of the joy of his heart, on which, crowned with the crown of thorns, he consummated his labor, and was afterward gladdened by the triumph of the resurrection. And in the day of his joy, and in the day of his espousal, he is to be seen in that diadem, and from that diadem how great he is, is to be recognized."

Whence St. Augustine, Book 4 of the Confessions, chapter 12: "He came," he says, "to us first into the virginal womb, where the human creature, mortal flesh, and yet not always to remain mortal, was wedded to him, and from thence, like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, he exulted as a giant to run his course, Psalm 18:6: for he did not delay, but ran, crying out by his words, his deeds, his death, his life, his descent, his ascent, crying out that we should return to him, and he withdrew from our eyes that we might return to our heart, and find him."

Hugh of St. Victor adds, Miscellanea II, Book 1, chapter 30, that the Blessed Virgin crowned Christ with the crown of righteousness, which consists in the ordering and balancing of the four passions of the soul, namely love and fear, joy and sadness: for he who has these four ordered is just, that is, well-composed; he who has them disordered is unjust; but Christ assumed them most perfectly ordered from the most pure flesh of the Blessed Virgin, in whom they were supremely ordered and composed, for she herself was free of all concupiscence and disturbance: "for children for the most part take after the mother," and assume the disposition and character rather of the mother than of the father, as Tiraquellus teaches from Galen, Aristotle, Avicenna, Albertus Magnus, and others, Book 2 On Marriage, number 73. To this belongs that which was foretold of Christ, Psalm 44:5: "With your comeliness and your beauty give heed, proceed prosperously, and reign. Because of truth and meekness, and righteousness." Hear Hugh: "He (Christ) was crowned by a stepmother, a father, and a mother: by the stepmother, the Synagogue; by the mother, the Virgin; by his Father, God. The stepmother crowned him with a crown of thorns and misery; the mother, with the crown of righteousness; the Father, with the crown of glory. The crown of thorns pierced him materially on the outside, spiritually on the inside, not for his own but for our offenses, that we might not disdain to be pierced for our own thorns for his sake. The mother's crown adorned him with four precious stones. These are the four principal affections of the soul: joy, love, sadness, fear. These affections, as blessed Augustine says, when ordered, are righteousness; when disordered, unrighteousness. Because, therefore, our Solomon assumed from the Virgin these affections ordered in himself, she herself crowned him with the aforesaid crown of righteousness. But that you may arrive at the full knowledge of the third diadem, with which God the Father crowned him with glory and honor, go forth from your vices, behold by faith, and by action, and by imitation, him crowned with the crown with which his mother crowned him, that by his example you may have the aforesaid affections ordered, with him granting it. Who," etc.