Wait, Tom--this is Jim Nohrnberg, not me!
> Anne, I cannot remark that in this one you have outdone yourself, and this
> only the first week of Advent. tpr
>
> [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>> ---------------------------- Original Message
>> ----------------------------
>> Subject: FORWARD FOR ME/US TO SPENSERLIST IF YOU WILL/CAN
>> From: "James C. Nohrnberg" <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Tue, December 2, 2003 3:33 pm
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Cc: [log in to unmask]
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Re David and Contemplation of Jerusalem, see above all 2
>> Samuel 7 and 1 Kings 5:3-5, 7:51, 8:12-26. Also see
>> Analogy, pp. 180ff.:
>>
>> ... the mountain at the end of the House of Holiness
>> canto, from which Redcrosse is able to see the New
>> Jersualem, is compared to Sinai and Olivet (I.x.53-54).
>> God spoke from Sinai, and Christ taught from Olivet, but
>> the allusion probably goes deeper. Moses in the mountain
>> was shown the pattern for the tabernacle, and hence a
>> prototype for the New Jerusalem. Christ wept over the old
>> Jerusalem, visible from Gesthemane on Olivet, just before
>> his passion [= Redcrosse's fight with the dragon]. With
>> respect to the structure of the narrative, the mountain
>> also corresponds to Pisgah, from which Moses viewed the
>> promised land that Joshua went over to possess. There is
>> also an allusion to the Mount of Transfiguration, for
>> Redcrosse's desire to go no further recalls Peter's
>> feeling on Mount Tabor that "it is good being here" (Matt.
>> 17:4). [{re 'allusion'} As noted by John E. Hankins,
>> Source and Meaning in Spenser's Allegory (Oxford, 1971),
>> p. 116. For the Pisgah vision in a saint's life, cf.
>> Gregory, Vita S. Benedicti, in Dialogues, II.37 (PL, LXVI,
>> 202B): At the death of St. Benedict, two monks at
>> separate places saw the same vision of a magnificent road
>> glittering with innumerable lights: from Benedict's
>> monastery it stretched eastward in a straight line and it
>> reached up to heaven. The monks are told by an
>> interpreter that this is the road taken by Benedict, "the
>> Lord's beloved." Spenser's Contemplation is thus not only
>> Johannine, but also Benedictine.] The Geneva Bible
>> explains that "After Moses and Elisas['] departure Peter
>> fearing he shuld lose that ioyful sight, speaketh as a man
>> distract & wold haue lodged them in earthely houses which
>> were receyued in glorie." Peter wished to build three
>> temples here; on Spenser's mountain there is a chapel and
>> a hermitage. The link between Olivet and Tabor also
>> becomes more apparent when we know that Christian
>> tradition (owing to Acts 1:12) regards Olivet as the scene
>> of the Ascension; pilgrims in the sixteenth century were
>> shown on Olivet the scene of the Transifiguration.
>> [Encyclopedia Biblica, ed. Cheyne and Black (New York,
>> 1903), sub "Olivet," where the name of Tabor, Jebel
>> et-Tor, is compared to the of Olivet, Jebel et-Tur. Karl
>> Baedeker, Palestine and Syria, 4th edn. (Leipzig, 1906),
>> p. 77f.: "The scene of the Ascension was located on the
>> Mt. of Olives as early as 315"; Baedeker adds a
>> description of the buildings there.] {The publisher's
>> rejected the following addition to this note:} In
>> Augustine, Confessions, VII.21, a Bunyanesque highroad to
>> the "land of peace" -- seen from a mount, from afar -- is
>> safe from the lion and dragon lurking in the intervening
>> forest. Except for the path, the space is impassible.
>> {["For it is one thing, from the mountain's wooded summit
>> to see the land of peace (Deut. 32:49), and not to find
>> the way thither--in vain to attempt impassable ways,
>> opposed and waylaid by fugitives and deserters, under
>> their captain the lion (1 Peter 5:8) and the dragon (Rev.
>> 12:3); and another to keep to the way that leads thither,
>> guarded by the host of the heavenly general, where they
>> rob not who have deserted the heavenly army, which they
>> shun as torture."]} {[As the diagram on pg. 201 of the
>> Analogy shows, David is in relation to Solomon and the
>> Jerusalem Temple as Moses is to Joshua and the Promised
>> Land (See Aug., De Civ. Dei XI.18 on vicissitudinous human
>> history being arranged antithetically between good and
>> evil alterations.) In the typology of Book I, Arthur's
>> victory is that of the Davidic Messiah, and the
>> messianich-apocalyptic key of David is that to the
>> conquest of Jerusalem. But David cannot build the temple
>> because he is man of blood, the reason Despair gives to
>> Redcrosse for his inability to enjoy the fruits of
>> salvation. David's sin, like Moses's, keeps him from this
>> fulfillment, just as Lancelot's sin keeps him from the
>> grail, as achieved by his son and successor Galahad: see
>> Analogy, p. 185]}
>>
>> So Analogy on p. 217:
>>
>> In the cycle of Israel, the episode of Despair has the
>> place ot the Israelites' inabililty to enter the promised
>> land under Moses, and their willingness to return to
>> Egypt. In entering the House of Holiness, Redcrosse is a
>> Solomon, a prototype of edification. The temple could not
>> have been built by David, a man of war who "shed muche
>> blood" and "made great battels" (I Chron. 22:8, Geneva
>> Bible). Redrosse's "great battels" won by "strife, and
>> bloudshed" (I.ix.43) similarly debar him in the preceding
>> Despair canto. There is also the despair of the oracles
>> of doom leading up to Babylon, where the psalmist wept.
>> The prototype for Redcrossee's regneration at the House
>> of Holiness would then be the return of the remnant to
>> rebuild Jersualem, as an echo from Nehemiah's description
>> might indicate (I.x.5, "It was warely watched night and
>> day:; cf. Neh. 4:9). [As noted in Hankins, SO\ource and
>> Meaning, p. 116. See Augustine, Ennar. in Ps. CI, Sermo
>> II.4 (PL, XXXVII, 1307), for the Church as a "Zion," of
>> which the "shadow" was "that Zion signified watch tower
>> [Speculatio]," from which the watchers look into the
>> future (as Contemplation foresees Redcrosse' entry into
>> the New Jerusalem).] Perhaps the uncertain establishment
>> of the new [Reformation] churches is signified. In the
>> calendar of the Church, the House of Holiness corresponds
>> to Lent, and Redcrosse is arrayed in sackcloth and ashes
>> here [before the "Passion" of the dragon-fight].
>>
>> The Analogy also gives references to show that
>> Contemplation is Johnanine, pp. 156ff.:
>>
>> Redcrosse's recuperation ... is mediated by the
>> mountaintop visionary named Contemplation, who in the
>> geography of the poem corresponds to Ariosto's St. John.
>> "Great grace that old man to him giuen had; For God he
>> often saw from heavns hight, / All were his earthly eyen
>> both blunt and bad, / And through great age had lost their
>> kindly sight, / Yet wondrous quick and persnat was his
>> spright, / As Eagles eye, that can behold the Sunne" [cf.
>> Rev. 1:16, 10:1, 19:17]: (I.x.47). The allusion to the
>> abosrption of Moses in the glory-cloud on Sinai (Exod.
>> 24:15-18, 34:29-35), and a more or less conventional
>> phrasing, do not rule out a particular reference to the
>> authro fot he FOurth Gospel and Rebelation. John is is
>> tradtionally believed to have written Revelation late in
>> life; he is shown Jerusalem from a high mountain (Rev.
>> 21:10); as the beloved apostle he may have received
>> special grace (his name means "God is gracious"); he may
>> have been granted an exceptionally long life; and the
>> traditional symbol of his Gospel is the eagle. These
>> associations meet in Rupert of Deutz's introduction to his
>> commentary on John's Gospel, where he is discussing the
>> purity required to those who would study "the venerable
>> writings in the school of Christ:: 'Thus only may they be
>> able in some measure to follow that eagle who delights in
>> purity of heart;thus only may they dare with undazzled
>> sharpness of mind to contemplate longer than other
>> creatures the splendor of the everlasting sun, the vision
>> of God himself. Of him who by the path of purity attains
>> true wisdom, the Lord speaks through Isaiah, "He will
>> dwell on the heights; his eyrie will be the fastnesses of
>> the rocks; bread has been given him, and his waters are
>> unfailing. His eyes will see the king in his comeliness;
>> the will behold a land of far frontiers." Indeed, what
>> pertains even more clearly to the present matter has been
>> said here as to blessed Job, with different words but with
>> the same meaning: "At the command of the Lord the eagle
>> soars upward and makes its nest on high places; it stays
>> on the rocks and dwells among the steep crags and
>> inaccessible fastnesses. Thence it spies out the prey;
>> its eyes behold it afar off." All these things John, the
>> sublime observer of that Word and His eternal beginnings,
>> has so eloquently pursued, soaring upward as the eagle,
>> gazing with eyes wide open at the rays of the Godhead. On
>> the heights he made his nest, that is, the fortress of the
>> everlasting gospel." [In Evnag. S. Joan Comm. libri XIC,
>> "Prologus Ruperti," PL, CLXIX, 203-206, trans. George
>> McCracken and Allen Cabaniss in Early Medieval Theology,
>> Library of Christian Classics, vol. 9 (Philadelphia,
>> 1957), p. 259.] These remarks on the Gospel of John are
>> typical, and they stem from St. Augustine's Harmony of the
>> Four Gospels. Augustine contrasts the writers of the
>> other Gospels, which are more earthbound, with John, who
>> "soars like an eagle above the clouds of human infirmity,
>> and gazes on the light of the unchangeable truth with
>> those keenest and steadiest eyes of the heart." [More
>> quotes are given, including Aquinas' use, from Aug.,
>> Harmony I.iv-vi, and Geneva Bible on John as "the key
>> which openeth the dore to the vnderstanding of the
>> others"--the other three gospels] ... We conclude that
>> Contemplation is Johanine, because John exemplifies
>> heavenly contemplation: '...he is born to loftier
>> heights, in which he leaves the other three [evangelists]
>> far behind him; so that, while in them you see men have
>> their conversation in a certain manner with the Christ on
>> earth, in him you perceive one who has passed beyond the
>> cloud in which the whole earth is wrapped, and who has
>> reached the liquid heaven from which, with clearest and
>> steadiest mental eye, he is able look upon God the Word,
>> who was in the beginning with God, and by whom all thing
>> were made.' [Aquinas, Prol. to John. In The Golden
>> Legend, St. John tells a questioner that the human spriti
>> reqquires responte from the contempaltion of heavenl
>> things, just as the sun-gazing eagle must upon occasion
>> return to earth.]
>>
>> On Mon, 1 Dec 2003 13:20:21 -0500
>> [log in to unmask] wrote:
>> >Thanks, Tom (and thanks to Genevieve and Carol, too. Yes,
>> >the commentaries
>> >might be very interesting to check in this regard. I like
>> >to think that
>> >Redcrosse will make it eventually to the City he can
>> >descry from the hill
>> >he's on, but not now. It's the "Mont de Contemplation" in
>> >La Boderie's
>> >"Galliade" that has me intrigued precisely because of the
>> >name. The man
>> >also wrote a sonnet sequence on the duc d'Alencon, an
>> >unlikely subject for
>> >a sonnet sequence, although so far I haven't read it to
>> >see if young
>> >Francois-Hercule is given pearly teeth and golden-wired
>> >hair or told to
>> >seize the day (or at least the Netherlands). Anne.
>> >
>> >> (For Anne Prescott)
>> >> Do you mean Mounts specifically designated
>> >>Contemplation, or just any old
>> >> mounts of visionary destiny? If the latter, then I
>> >>suppose Nebo/Pisgah
>> >> would be the main antetype, though Moses, of course, was
>> >>looking at what
>> >> he
>> >> specifically would NEVER get to because he had sinned.
>> >>Just because one
>> >> can
>> >> see it from a sublime place doesn't mean one can reach
>> >>it. An admonitory
>> >> thought perhaps. Whether Nebo was taken up specifically
>> >>as a type of
>> >> contemplation in commentaries might be worth looking
>> >>into. It's hard to
>> >> imagine it wasn't, but I don't have particular texts to
>> >>hand.
>> >>
>> >> Tom
>> >>
>> >
>>
>> [log in to unmask]
>> James Nohrnberg
>> Dept. of English
>> Univ. of Virginia
>> Charlottesville, VA 22903
>>
>> & [log in to unmask]
>
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