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The Classics in the Middle Ages The Classics in the Middle Ages Papers of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Centerfor Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies Edited by ,5- .J_c Aldo S. Bernardo Saul Levin rneaievaJ & Renaissance 'texts & srzröies Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies Binghamton, New York 1990 The Heritage of Fulgentius ROBERT EDWARDS The sixth-century allegorical writer Fulgentius is an important, if at times problematic, figure in the transvaluation of the classics in later peri- ods. He enjoyed a remarkably durable reputation among later writers in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Isidore of Seville and Rabanus Maurus, the major encyclopedists of the early Middle Ages, use him as a source for glosses and allegorical explanations, as do the three Vatican Mythographers who succeed him as a commentator on pagan myth. The Carolingian abbot Smaragdus of St. Michel counts Fulgentius among the Church Fathers whom he draws on to adorn his book "full of the flowers of allegories," Max Laistner points out that Fulgentius' ornate style and exotic language influenced Carolingian writers to use rare words, mythological allusions, and etymologies in their compositions.f In the eleventh century, Sigebert of Gembloux mentions Fulgentius' acumen in- genii for interpreting pagan myths according to natural and moral philosophy in his Afytlwlogio.e.3 Fulgentius' equally renowned treatment of Vergil and especially of the Aeneid (the Vergiliana continentia) inspired a similar commentary on Statius' Thebaid, which was ascribed to Fulgentius but arguably written by a later hand." Literary historians credit Fulgentius in particular with introducing a sustained allegorical framework to con- tain the partial and fragmented glossings of Donatus, Servius, and Mac- robius.f The high estimate of Fulgentius in the Middle Ages is balanced, in some measure, by healthy skepticism, if not frank reservations. It is Boc- caccio who reflects perhaps most clearly the divided response that some writers felt. Boccaccio praises Fulgentius as "doctor atque pontifex catholi- cus," but at several places in his Genealogie deorum gentilium he protests that he avoids the flights of fancy that often mark Fulgentius' search for ob- scure meanings in literary texts." Nonetheless, Fulgentius remains a 142 The Heritage of Fulgentius source for allegories for humanist scholars like Coluccio Salutati.? The Fulgentian thesis that the Asneid outlines a scheme of moral development through the various ages of man establishes a framework for Mapheus Vegius to bring Vergil's epic to aesthetic and moral completeness by add- ing a Thirteenth Book." The same thesis reappears in William Adling- ton's translation of Apuleius' Metamorphoses (1566): "this book of Lucius is a figure of man's life, and toucheth the nature and manners of mortal men, egging them forward from their asinine form to their human and perfect shape," The examples I have been citing give some indication of Fulgentius' stature as an authority for interpreting myth and poetry, but they tell relatively little about the kind of fascination he exercised over subsequent writers, about the qualities to which those writers responded while ad- mitting that his interpretations could be hyperbolic and precious." These are more subtle dimensions ofliterary influence than citation and testimony, but they offer a way of understanding the complex dialectic by which Christian culture assimilated classical literature. There are abun- dant sources on which a comparative study of this kind of influence might draw, such as Albericus of London's rewriting of the story of Syrophanes from the Mythowgiae or John de Ridevall's extension of Fulgentius' moral iconography in the Fulgentius mefß.juralis.l1 But I shall confine myself to the commentary on the first six books of the Asneid which is generally thought to have been written by the twelfth-century Platonist Bemardus Silves- tris, for it is in the reading ofVergil that the assumptions and difficulties of Fulgentius' method stand out clearly.12 I have discussed at length in another paper the underlying assump- tions of Fulgentius' Mythowgiae and Vergiliana continentia.13 Briefly, Fulgen- tius draws on the conventional distinction between things (res) and words (uerba) in classical linguistic theory, but he emphasizes the separation of the linguistic sign from the thing signified, of the proper from the figurative sense of words. Without claiming for pagan myths and secular texts the divine inspiration that Christian exegetes find in Scripture, he argues that a kind of philosophical truth exists apart from the surface of lan- guage. This truth provides the moral lessons which he takes as the figura- tive sense of classical myths." Furthermore, having established this separation of signs from refer- ents, Fulgentius comes to equate the perception of hidden meaning with its actual presence. Reading is defined as an act of ingenuity and critical virtuosity. hi the Prologue to book 2 of the Mythologiae, Fulgentius im- agines it as a gymnastic arena (arenam nostri studii and tui palestram ingenit) where the reader can exercise and test his skill for seeing hidden sig- ROBERT EDWARDS 143 nificance: a space of play and moral rehearsal. Reading, then, is a con- scious projection of ethical assumptions and associations onto the for- mal structure of the text; and it is made on the authority of moral truth, which resides outside the text and independent from the problems ofliter- ary representation. In the commentary on Vergil, Fulgentius dramatizes this style of reading and its potential for play by constructing an im- agined dialogue with the poet, in which Vergil explains his intention to offer common-sense moralizing while the commentator summons the courage to explain the hidden truths of the poem to its author. What Fulgentius establishes in this fictive exchange is the proximity of discur- sive and interpretive writing to the mimetic and imaginative works that commentary is supposed to elucidate. Commentary and exegesis, he demonstrates, share important properties and formal characteristics with fictional discourse. Reading a text in the light of its ultimate reference, the interpreter subtly reshapes the original to reveal meaning beyond authorial or aesthetic intent. In Bernardus' commentary, Fulgentius is a source for specific points of interpretation, and he lends the general notion that Vergil's poem in- corporates the ages of man into its structure. Fulgentius' division between proper and figurative meanings reappears in the commentary, as does his insistence on the dual nature of the poet. In addition, Bemardus makes an effort to assimilate the techniques of Fulgentius' allegorizing to other literary authorities. Fulgentius had discussed Vergil as uaies, but Bemardus adds Macrobius' testimony that a "twin doctrine" operates in the Aeneid, and he assigns Vergil the roles of "poeta et philosophus.?" Like earlier commentators, Bernardus discovers a moral purpose in Aeneas' exam- ple of suffering, filial piety, and reverence, and he sees a caution against immoderate love in Aeneas' desire for Dido.16 He also adapts Horace to redefine the poem's genre and bring it in line with Fulgentian moraliz- ing. Reworking Horace's famous admonition that poets should instruct or entertain (Ars Poetica 333), he looks in the Asneid for both the useful- ness of satire and the delight of comedy; those two genres are then joined in yet a third form, historical writing. Although epic devices may afford heightened verbal adornment, Bernardus argues, Vergil's poem is relat- ed essentially to the functions of the middle style, which St. Augustine had earlier defined as praise and blame (De doctrina christiana 4.17-19)and which Fulgentius implied in stressing Vergil's adherence to the rules of praise. Two radically divergent styles had helped to animate the ~rgiliano. con- tinentia while remaining above the text which is their source of play. Ful- gentius rehearses the lessons of the grammatici, while his Vergil expounds 144 The Heritage of Fulgentius the original intention. By contrast, Bernardus uncovers two distinct orders within the text; he sees a rhetorical joining of artificial and natural ord- er that mirrors the poet's dual roles. Vergil as poet, beginning "a medio narration em," constructs an artificial order whose affinities, Bernardus remarks, are to Terence's comedies rather than the epics of Lucan and Statius. Meanwhile, as a philosopher, Vergil observes a natural order in treating "humane uite naturam" and setting down "quid paciatur huma- nus spiritus in humano corpore temporal iter positus" ("what the human spirit undergoes while temporarily placed in the human body" [3]). This description of the poem's rhetorical economy marks an advance over Ful- gentius' view that philosophical meaning overarches the text. Like Mac- robius who found four kinds of oratory combined in Vergil (Saturnalia 5.1.1-7), Bernardus argues for a coherent rhetorical organization of the poem in which the poet's dual roles and the narrative orders effect a syn- thesis of meaning. His argument, as Brian Stock notes, "is an attempt to integrate the creation of a literary work into the realm of experience" by employing moral and physical allegory." The concern with rhetorical order in the Asneid leads Bernardus to speculate generally about the nature oflanguage and particularly about its figurative use. Fulgentius' radical dislocation of signifier and signified had proceeded from his assumption that there is a disparity between authorial intention and hidden meaning: significance resides in a com- prehensive philosophical system whose moral precepts are the things to which the text must ultimately refer; hence aesthetic unity is to be sought somewhere other than in the constructions oflanguage itself. Bernardus formulates a different sort of problem by considering the various mean- ings that arise from the poetic fiction but still reflect a sense of integritas. He interprets Venus, for example, in her legitimate aspect as musica mun- dana (or the equal proportions of the cosmos or natural justice) and in her wanton aspect as cupidity.
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