I promised to post a summary of what I have in my files, so here it goes:
The question how and when the forbidden fruit (translated "fructus" in
Vulgate) came to be interpreted as an apple is one of those questions which
pop up in more or less regular intervals on medieval discussion lists and
should be included into a FAQ for medieval-religion, but as far as I have
followed the discussions over the years, nobody so far has supplied a
satisfying answer. I myself have never done any serious research on this
particular subject, but when collecting source materials of interest for
other elements of the biblical account of creation (namely the number of
the six days of creation, and the four rivers of paradise) I had to browse
through a certain number of exegetic sources where also the forbidden fruit
was treated, and I have checked some commentaries on the Canticles in
addition, which means that I can offer my comments only on the grounds of a
limited and only partly specific but maybe not entirely irrelevant source
evidence.
1) The Latin exegetical sources which I have studied, i.e. commentaries,
glosses and homilies from patristic times down to the 13th century, have
no pronounced interest in the botanic species of the tree of knowledge.
What they discuss instead is if this tree was a real 'corporal' tree or
just a metaphor, if it was evil/nocious in itself or if its pernicious
effect was caused rather by human disobedience than by the nature of the
tree itself, if it was the same tree or a different tree from the one
described as "lignum vitae", and other questions of moral or theological
interest, but I have never found a lengthy discussion of the question if
this tree was an appletree or a figtree or some other known species. For
its fruit my Latin sources normally use the terms "fructus" and/or "pomum"
(cf. "lignum pomiferum" Gn 1,11), or speak in more general terms of "esca"
(cf. Gn 1,29) or "cibus", but with the exceptions quoted below they don't
specify the fruit as an apple ("malum") or as some other known fruit.
2) It is possible that at least some of thse medieval authors use "pomum"
in the sense 'apple', especially in the case of authors with a French
vernacular background, because as far as I know French had no more specific
word for apple than "pom(m)e", and medieval Latin too tended to use "pomum"
or "poma" in this more specific sense (Hable & Groebel's
_Mittellateinisches Glossar_ lists "pomarius" only with the meaning
'appletree'). But to be sure of the meaning in such texts we need some
additional specification which makes it clear that the "pomum" is in fact
to be understood as an 'apple'. As an even more general caution I quote
from a MedtText-L posting by Claire Fanger: "Both Latin 'malum' and english
'apple' have in the past meant not just the specific fruit 'apple' but in a
general way any fruit 'having a kernel within' as Lewis and Short put it;
likewise the OED has plenty of early entries for 'aeppel' where it means a
kind of a fruit with seeds inside ('used with greatest latitude from
earliest times' it says)." Going through my own materials, I have
heuristically decided to regard "pomum" (without more clear specification)
as too generic but "malum" (as well as OE aepple, MHG apfel, Ital. mela) as
sufficiently specific.
3) When Denis Hue had brought up the question back in '96, I had replied to
him off the list, telling him that the tree of knowledge can be found
interpreted as an appletree in the typological exegesis of Ct 8,5: "Sub
arbore malo suscitavi te, ibi corrupta est mater tua, ibi violata est
genetrix tua". This was second-hand knowledge based on an old note of mine
which I had taken from a source which I do not remember (the context of my
note suggests that I may have taken it from a commentary by Stackmann on
Frauenlob's adoption of Ct 8,5 in his _Marienleich_ 18,16s.), and I would
like to precise and substantiate it a bit.
The standard exegesis of Ct 8,5 actually did *not* relate the
'appletree' to the tree of knowledge, but to the Cross of Christ, and
explained the "mater tua" as the Synagogue 'corrupt' by original sin and in
its action against Christ but then redeemed under the cross. Explanations
of this type do not always refer to original sin, and even where they do,
they often do it only in passing and don't elaborate on the tree of
knowledge or the forbidden fruit. One of those who give a bit more weight
to the parallel between the tree of knowledge and the 'appletree' of the
Cross is Honorius Augustodunensis, who explains the "mater tua" as the
human nature in general (and Eve more specifically) who was corrupted by
the devil "sub arbore maledictionis", "cum de interdicto pomo comedit", and
then was redeemed by the 'appletree' of the Cross. But Honorius does not
identify the tree of knowledge as an appletree or its fruit as an apple
(unless we have to take "pomum" in this sense). Another gloss which seems
of interest can be found in Anselm of Laon, _Enarrationes in Cantica
canticorum_ (cap. VIII, PL 162,1226). Anselm explains "_sub arbore_, id est
sub peccato facto per arborem _malo_, id est in peccato primi parentis",
and then adds that according to certain Greek books the Cross of Christ was
made from the wood of an offspring of the tree of knowledge, a remark which
helps him to establish more firmly that "_ibi_, id est in arbore illa
_corrupta fuit et violata mater_, id est Synagoga" (ibd.). For Anselm the
tree of knowledge and the tree of the Cross seem to be of the same species,
but it is doubtful if he also regards them as appletrees, because in his
exegesis the 'appletree' of Ct 8,5 serves only as a metaphor or signum of
the Cross and does not necessarily specify its species. Yet this caution --
if caution can be seen at work in his gloss -- did not always prevail.
Gilbert Foliot (_Expositio in Cantico canticorum_, PL 202,1298s.) reports
the view that the tree of knowledge was an appletree ("Dicunt enim vetitam
illam arborem, a qua homo in Paradiso abstinere jussus est, malum fuisse"),
and accepts this view for his own exegesis when he speaks of the 'appletree
of disobedience' ('inobedientiae malum') and says about original sin "quod
ex malo contractum est". In a similar sense also Johannes Algrinus phrases:
"Arborem crucis signat, quam designat per malum, quia contra pomum
damnationis Adae, portavit haec arbor pomum salutis Jesum Christum, qui,
sicut pomum, nos pascit et potat carnis suae et sanguinis sacramento" (PL
206,808). Or Philipp of Harvengt, _Commentaria in Canticum canticorum_, VI,
40: "Cum igitur de sub arbore malo, quae mortem intulit, est erepta, sub
arbore nihilominus malo, quae vitae fructum attulit, est transvecta" (PL
203,480).
Given that Anselm refers to Greek legends of the wood of the Cross
(although he does not say that these legends identify the tree as an
appletree), and that Gilbert introduces his account with "Dicunt" but
without adducing any authorities by name, the 'botanic' understanding in
question seems not to have originated in biblical exegesis (at least not in
Christian exegesis, see below #7), but was adopted by some exegetes from
other sources for explaining Ct 5,8, in the course of the 12th century. I
have never found it in commentaries on the Book of Genesis, and I have not
checked legends of wood of the cross if they determine the species of the
tree (for these legends see Franz Kampers, _Mittelalterliche Sagen vom
Paradiese und vom Holze des Kreuzes Christi_, Ko"ln: Bachem, 1897; Richard
Morris, _Legends of the holy rood. Symbols of the passion and cross-poems.
In Old English of the eleventh, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries_,
London 1871; A. S. Napier, _History of the holy rood-tree, a twelfth
century version of the cross-legend_, London 1894; Edward Moore, _Studies
in Dante_, Third series, 1903, p.219s., who in turn draws on a monograph _
Sulla leggenda della Croce_ by Adolfo Mussafia).
4) In the course of this present and of earlier discussions, others have
pointed out that in Latin 'apple' (malum with a long -a-) and 'evil' (malum
with a short -a-) can be associated phonetically, and that grammatical
wordplays might have contributed to or might even have been at the origin
of the notion that the forbidden fruit was an apple. So far nobody has
adduced as medieval text applying such a wordplay to the tree of knowledge
or its fruit (Jim Marchand has only dropped the name of Johannes de
Garlandia, but without adducing a passage). I myself have never found it it
in exegetical sources, and although there are many, many sources which I
have not yet studied I think I have seen enough of them to conclude that
this wordplay was at least not a locus communis in biblical exegesis.
5) There are vernacular texts which specify the forbidden fruit as an
apple, if we may take the respective words in this sense (notwithstanding
that OE "aepple" can also refer to other 'fruit having a kernel within'):
on MedText-L, Oren Falk once adduced the Old English poem "Genesis" (lines
637, 880, and possibly elsewhere), and Jim Marchand mentioned that Berceo
"wavers between the fig and the apple"; in Middle High German, I can offer
Konrad von Wuerzburg, _Goldene Schmiede_, 390ss.: "ich ru"emez iemer unde
lobez | an dir, frouwe, mit genuht, | daz din gebeneditiu fruht | den aphel
ie moht u"berwegen, | der uns des hohen wunsches segen | und alle fro"ude
nider zoch" (i.e. Jesus as Mary's blessed fruit outweighed the fatal
apple). I am sure that there are many other examples in vernacular texts,
but I have not collected them. However, it seems that medieval Italian
literature does not have much to offer for our question: the database of
the OVI (http://humanities.uchicago.edu/ARTFL/projects/OVI/), which
contains nearly 1400 Italian texts from the time of the the beginnings to
ca. 1375, does not offer any text with "mela" for the forbidden fruit (or
"melo" for the tree), wheras examples with "pom-" abbound (I leave aside
Dante's highly associative "melo" in Pg 32,73).
6) It seems that examples abound also in figural arts, where artists
represented the tree as a fig-tree (because of Gn 3,7) or palmtree (maybe
because of the palmtree in the Canticles) or appletree or used other models
from their surroundings, but I myself have not collected and anlaysed such
examples and can only refer to Louis Re/au, _Iconographie de l'art
chre/tien_, II.1, Paris 1956, p.85s., Hans Martin von Erffa, _Ikonologie
der Genesis_, vol. I, Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1989, p.120-124
(quoted by Jim Marchand) and other iconographic handbooks.
7) It is possible that Jewish tradition has more to offer for this
particular subject than my own Latin materials (Gilbert Foliot's evasive
source reference "Dicunt" might well refer to Jewish traditions), but again
I can only refer to a study which I myself have not seen: Louis Ginzberg
(quoted by Marchand as the source used by Erffa), _The Lengends of the
Jews_, vol. I (_Bible times and characters from the creation to Jacob_),
Philadelphia 1954, and vol. V (_Notes_), p.97s.
To conclude: I still cannot say where and when the understanding in
question originated, but given that I have not found it in Christian
exegetical sources of the time before the 12th century, I would rule out
'patristic' origins in the strict sense.
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