Medieval exegesis
February 21, 2010 10:29pm
Filed under:
Lost the tradition
This is a shorter summary that reports the demise of the hermeneutics that dominated Western theology till about the year 1500.
The five page article ends with the sentence:
‘With the coming of the Reformation and humanism, which employed the disciplines of the new learning, criticism, philology, and history, the usefulness of medieval exegesis as a hermeneutical system was virtually terminated. Face to face with this new critical spirit and its scientific technique, medieval exegesis ceased to be relevant and was discarded’ (p.712).
This article does give a sketch how the sense theory evolved. Sometimes it was threefold body, soul and spirit anthropology with a threefold sense of Scripture: somatic, psychic, and pneumatic (Origen De Principilis 4.2.4).
John Cassian teaches the threefold method using the terms the ‘letter’ or literal, ‘tropicus’ which is the moral sense and higher understanding which is called ‘anagogic’ (Collationes 8.3).
Gregory the Great, in his homilies on Ezekiel (Hom. 9 n.8) developed the fourfold senses theory: literal and three spiritual senses: the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogic. The literal was not neglected, but the spiritual meanings were the revelation (p.708).
