Augustine (Aage) of Dacia's 1260 AD summary of the Medieval Fourfold Method (Quadriga) as opposed to later formulations.

-

I offer this as a corrective.  The earliest known text to include the Quadriga is thought to be Augustine (Aage) of Dacia's Rotulus Pugillaris (1260), as follows:

Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria.
(The Letter teaches acts [what was literally done], the Allegory what you should believe)

Moralis quid agas, quid speres anagogia.
(The moral [teaches] what you should do, the Anagogy, what you should hope for)
I offer clips of the original to aid in the accurate representation of both Augustine's and Nicholas of Lyra's versions.

Very often sources misrepresent the former author by presenting a form with a different final statement, so that instead of Augustine's "quid speres anagogia," (Anagogy, what you should hope for), he is credited instead with quo tendas anagogia, (The Anagogy, where you should be bound) a form used, for example, by Nicholas of Lyra (see below).

Examples of the error can be found, to mention only few examples, in the following:

J. Nohrnberg, "Exegesis," Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (4th ed.; eds. Roland Greene, et al.; Princeton and London: Princeton University Press, 2012), 467.

Gerard McLarney,  St. Augustine's Interpretation of the Psalms of Ascent (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press of America, 2014), 57, n 184.

Umberto Eco, From Tree to Labyrinth: Historical Studies on the Sign and Interpretation (Tran. Anthony Oldcorn; Cambridge, MA and London, UK: Harvard University Press, 2014), 132.

Francis Martin, "Some Directions in Catholic Biblical Theology," in Out of Egypt, Biblical Theology and Biblical Interpretation (Scripture and Hermeneutics Series 5; eds. Craig Bartholomew, Mary Healy, Karl Möller, Robin Parry; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004),78.

Humbertus R. Drobner, Fathers of the Church: A Comprehensive Introduction (trans. Siegfried S. Schatzmann; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), 141.

William Yarchin, History of Biblical Interpretation: A Reader (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 101.  (seemingly).

Alister E. McGrath, Luther's Theology of the Cross (2nd ed.; Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011):103, n. 20.

McGrath presents a special case since he gives as the final part, not quid speres Anagogia as in Augustine of Dacia, nor quo tendas anagogia as in Nicholas of Lyra, but quo tendis, anagoria, but again, wrongly attributing it to Augustine of Dacia.

McGrath complicates matters by citing not only the 1955 article presenting the text of Augustine's Rotulus Pugillarus, but also an earlier article on Augustine (Aage) by the same person as edited that text,  namely: A. Walz, “Des Aage von Dënmark ‘Rotulus pugillaris’ im Licht der dominikanishen Kontroverstheologie,” Classica et Mediaevalia 15 (1954): 198-252.

 By doing so McGrath  raises the question whether Walz's 1954 article might contain the alternative form McGrath gives in place of the one that actually appears in Aage’s text itself.  In fact it does not.


I offer clips of the original to aid in the accurate representation of both Augustine's and Nicholas of Lyra's versions.

Earliest known occurrence of the Quadriga (Augustine of Dacia, Rotulus Pugillaris [1260])





Nicholas of Lyra’s Glossa Ordinaria in Bibliorum sacrorum cum glossa ordinaria (vol. 1: first prologue to Lyra’s Postilla)



Nicholas of Lyra’s Glossa Ordinaria in Bibliorum sacrorum cum glossa ordinaria (vol. 6: column 505).



For easy access to the above source, see here




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Timeline of David Alexander, Celebrity Ex-Evangelical Convert to Mormonism

-
Image
"...my 47 years in evangelical Christianity." See here ( 20:20) Here, as best as I can gather, is the religious background of the celebrated ex-evangelical convert to Mormonism David Alexander.  Alexander features his evangelical background as the platform from which he defends Mormonism and opposes evangelicals.  Questions have been posed about the extent of Alexander's evangelical involvement.  How one answers these questions will depend on (1) whether one considers the Twelve Tribe group in which Alexander (as "Duresh") belonged for what appears to be most of the last 20 years, should be counted as evangelical or not, and (2) whether the great number of churches Alexander reports having passed through during the previous 27 years, some of which could undoubtedly be counted as evangelical, represents typical evangelical experience.   I leave it to my readers to decide the answers to these two questions for themselves. Where possible I have relied on Alexand
Read more

Sex & the Spiritual Teachers: Spiritual Sexual Predators in the SBNR Community

-
Image
Recently added items:  " Sexual Ethics and Healthy Boundaries in the Wake of Teacher Abuse ," Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Guide (Winter 2023): 63-77. Buddhadharma  is a spinoff of Shambhala Sun , which was founded by the notorious womanizer Chogyam Trungpa.  I was very interested in seeing whether the article mentioned Trungpa and his son Sakyong Mipham, since both of them represented poor examples of the problem described in the article.  And as it turns out they are mentioned later in the article.  They don't note, however, that Sakyong Mipham, whose sex-scandal goes back to 2018, laid low for a year or so and then went right back to teaching. They do mention that "Osel Tendzin, the American dharma heir of Chögyam Trungpa, had engaged in unprotected sex with a number of his students despite knowing he was HIV positive. One student later died of AIDS, as did Tendzin." But they don't address the charge by Stephen Butterfield, a member of the gro
Read more

Four Key Differences between the Essenes and Jesus

-
Image
1. Oil Defilement: The Essenes regarded oil as a defilement, such that “ anyone who accidentally comes into contact with it scours his person” ( Jewish War 2.123, cf. Damascus Document xii.16).   Jesus urged those who were fasting not to “ look dismal, like the hypocrites,” who “disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting,” but rather to “put oil on your head and wash your face.” (Matthew 6:16-17).   2. Hierarchy:   The Essenes were in general very big on hierarchical ranking, especially in their separated communities. If a higher-ranking member so much as touched a lower-ranking one he had to bathe, “as after contact with an alien” (Josephus, Jewish War 2.150, cf. Damascus Document XVI.5-6 and 4Q279, Community Rule III.19-25).   This naturally also affected who the Essenes in their various rankings would sit down and eat with and who they would not (Community Rule [1QS] V.10-19). Jesus, in contrast, rejected such ranking, insisting that his disciples
Read more