Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria nova is one of the artes poetriae, a body of texts Douglas Kelly called the “arts of poetry and prose,”Footnote 1 and it survives in over two hundred manuscript copies, over thirty of which are composed in English hands.Footnote 2 As Martin Camargo has recently shown, treatises such as Geoffrey's enjoyed a renaissance in England in the last decades of the fourteenth century, and not just in elementary classrooms (as had long been supposed). Camargo explains, for example, that Chaucer's “self-conscious engagement” with those texts would not have taken place at a rudimentary level during his elementary education but rather during his adult life, “in the context of discovery and debate carried on not only at England's premier center of higher education but also in learned circles with strong Oxford connections.”Footnote 3 The treatise had a strong commentary traditionFootnote 4 and was cited by prominent writers including Chaucer, Vincent of Beauvais, and Nicholas Trevet.Footnote 5 Erasmus even ranked Geoffrey alongside Cicero, Quintilian, and Horace.Footnote 6 For readers such as these, Geoffrey was a teacher, but, perhaps more importantly, he was also a poet. To understand fully the meaning of the Poetria nova and the value it had for medieval poets, we must read Geoffrey's dense Latin verse not just for its precepts but also for its poetic style.
Although it is often acknowledged that Geoffrey “embodies” the art he teaches,Footnote 7 most of the critical work on the Poetria nova has concentrated on its sources, its relationships to other treatises, or on education and rhetorical theory. More recently, however, two important critical works have focused on its poetic qualities. In line with Margaret F. Nims's observation that Geoffrey had a “fondness for novel metaphor,”Footnote 8 Jean-Yves Tilliette and Alexandre Leupin have written separately about key metaphors and images that Geoffrey either borrows from other writers or invents. Leupin identifies the recurring value of likening poetry to a mirror, for example, to explain how it demonstrates literary values influenced by the Christian doctrine of the incarnation.Footnote 9 Tilliette argues more broadly that the Poetria nova is a “discourse on poetry towards a discourse of poetry” and that the treatise therefore cannot be reduced to a set of mere definitions and principles.Footnote 10 Following the precedent set by their work, I argue for close attention to two images used to explain the workings of metaphoricity: the image of peregrinatio (pilgrimage) and of a nubes serena (clear cloud). In liturgical drama, biblical commentary, and iconography the images have a rich history of signifying the affective power of the relationship between the literal and non-literal. By adopting them for a rhetorical treatise, Geoffrey aligns their hermeneutical significance with his literary argument for the subtle efficacy of unobtrusive metaphoric language: a rhetorical process that takes place when the proper or literal sense is so familiar and quotidian that initially it conceals its nature and meaning and thus takes the reader wondrously by surprise. Recognizing the provenance of these images can expand our understanding of likely influences on the treatise, and exploring their resonance can deepen our appreciation for Geoffrey's interest as a poet in leveraging the affective potential of transumptive language.
The Pilgrimage of Metaphor
The images of pilgrimage and the clear cloud appear in the sections of the treatise on ornamentation. Geoffrey divides the types of ornaments into two categories: ornatus leves, ornamentation that uses words in the sense proper to them, and ornatus graves, ornamentation that uses words in a sense non-proper to them. In the treatise, the ten weighty ornaments, sometimes called tropes in other medieval writings on rhetoric, include translatio, nominatio, pronominatio, permutatio, denominatio, superlatio, intellectio, abusio, and transgressio.Footnote 11 All have in common another key term in the discipline of rhetoric: transumptio. The term has a long and complicated history, spanning the centuries from classical to early modern rhetoric. In classical Latin, the word means generally “the taking or assuming of one thing for another,” known in Greek rhetoric as metalepsis.Footnote 12 Quintilian is the first rhetorician known to have used the term. In the Institutio oratoria he provides a “syllogistic” pattern with a “major premise, minor premise, and conclusion,” to borrow William Purcell's description.Footnote 13 Although Quintilian's narrow definition was used in the Middle Ages (including Donatus's Ars grammatica, Bede's Liber de schematibus et tropis, and Matthew of Vendôme's Ars versificatoria),Footnote 14 a broader definition also existed in which transumptio was always connected with a dislocation of meaning from proper to non-proper or, as Irène Rosier-Catach succinctly calls it, “la notion de transfert sémantique.” This definition was used in a variety of contexts and discourses, including writings on grammar, rhetoric (including rhetorical commentaries), logic, and theology.Footnote 15 Gervase of Melkley's Ars poetica, John of Garland's De arte prosayca, metrica, et rithmica, and Eberhard the German's Laborintus all use transumptio as the heading under which fall the ornaments that use words in a non-proper sense.Footnote 16
The Poetria nova, however, played a key role in adapting the broad definition of transumptio to make it the defining characteristic of the tropes. It is explicitly the organizing principle in the section on the ornatus graves. To introduce these ornaments, Geoffrey writes,
Do not always permit a word to reside in its proper place: such a residence disgraces the word. Let it steer clear of its proper place and go on pilgrimage elsewhere and find an agreeable dwelling in another land. Let it be a new guest there and please by its newness. If you produce this remedy, you make the countenance of the word young again. This method teaches how to transume words fittingly.Footnote 17
Geoffrey firmly establishes the connection between transumptio and the proper/non-proper distinction and, more importantly, makes transumptio the umbrella under which fall all ten of the tropes and the dislocating process that defines them.
In light of the importance of transumptio in the discourse of rhetoric in the Middle Ages and the role played by the Poetria nova, the finer details of Geoffrey's explanation merit close attention. In the passage above, he uses the image of a word going on a pilgrimage, and it reoccurs later in the same section, in a second reflection on the effect of transumptive language:
This group of ten ornaments colors words with a weightiness that consists of receiving a word not through its proper voice but through an unfamiliar one. They all belong to one class characterized by the non-proper state of voice and the sense of the words on pilgrimage.
Transumptive language, therefore, displaces words from their ordinary, familiar location to an unfamiliar, extra-ordinary one.
Despite the fact that the Poetria nova has been written about more than any other medieval rhetorical treatise, the image of pilgrimage has gone unremarked with the exception of Tilliette. This is perhaps because it is obscured in all three published translations of the treatise. In lines 758–65 it is translated as “uncommon meaning” (Nims), “the choice of words is exotic” (Kopp), or “wandering application” (Gallo). In lines 960–64, it is translated as “travel about” (Nims) or “wander elsewhere” (Kopp; Gallo). None of these translations is incorrect. Lewis and Short confirms each, and peregrinus could be used in classical rhetoric to describe a type of barbarolexis involving the use of non-Latin words and provincialisms.Footnote 18 In medieval Latin, peregrinatio could indeed generally mean a journey to a foreign location, but it also referred more specifically, of course, to the spiritual practice of pilgrimage to holy places.Footnote 19 In the Poetria nova, then, each of these ten figures sends a word on a pilgrimage from its own, accustomed, proper place to a place not its own.
Tilliette is, to my knowledge, the only critic to recognize why this translation could suit Geoffrey's purposes. He notes briefly that the association with spiritual progress towards regeneration and renewal is apt for transumptio because it is a process that involves displacement of meaning.Footnote 20 His observation seems to imply that Geoffrey came up with the image himself, but the connection between peregrinatio and metaphor is well documented in key texts in the Latin tradition. First, Geoffrey knew the works of Alan of Lille and may have known him personally during his education in Paris.Footnote 21 One of Alan's shorter poetic works, “De Incarnatione Christi Rhythmus Perelegans,” meditates on the Christian teaching of the Incarnation through seven stanzas for the seven liberal arts. Peregrinatio appears in connection with metaphoric language in the stanza for rhetoric as Alan plays on terminology:
The defining power of the noun strays from its natural role when the condition of a man passes into the rule of God. A new figural troping takes place, a new construction; a new metaphorical joining, a new translation comes to pass. In this joining of the Word, every rule is confounded.Footnote 22
The incarnation is described in this stanza as a metaphoric process, a new “troping” or “translation” in which the flesh is transformed by union with the godhead.Footnote 23 It is a departure — a pilgrimage — from the natural to the supernatural.
In the prologue to the Distinctiones, pilgrimage again appears in connection with metaphoric language. Alan justifies the necessity of his wordlist, describing that which is periculosus (dangerous) and difficilis (difficult) in scriptural interpretation when readers do not understand the meanings of metaphors and obscure tropes. This is particularly true for such places,
ubi non habemus sermones de quibus loquitur, ubi rem ut est sermo non loquitur, ubi vocabula a propriis significationibus peregrinantur et novas admirari videntur; ubi divina descendit excellentia ut humana ascendat intelligentia.
where we have no words for that of which we speak, where the discourse does not speak of the matter as it is, where names are displaced from their proper significations and new things to be wondered at are perceived, where divine excellence descends so that human understanding may ascend.Footnote 24
In this passage, Alan's use of the word accords with the Poetria nova and “De Incarnatione”: it denotes the way that metaphoric language departs from customary use to produce something new and wondrous.
Finally, in the Anticlaudianus, Alan uses peregrinus to portray Lady Rhetoric when she adorns the chariot fashioned by Grammar and Dialectic. In the description of her appearance, Alan writes:
In her face a fiery color plays, a purple flame on her rosy mouth that splendidly enhances her beauty. Yet a gleam of a foreign kind also lurks in her face and seeks to blend itself with her natural color.Footnote 25
Alan is indebted to Peter of Compostella's De consolatione rationis for the phrase “candor peregrinus inhaeret.”Footnote 26 This foreign brightness may be a reference to the influence of Greek rhetoric on early Latin rhetoric, but it may also be a more specific reference to a tradition as old as Aristotle of ascribing special value to unobtrusive but powerful metaphor.Footnote 27
Furthermore, figuring a process of language as a peregrinatio makes sense given other spatiotemporal ways of thinking about reading and writing. Augustine sometimes described interpretation as a journey along a road, as in this passage in De doctrina christiana:
Sed quisquis in Scripturis aliud sentit quam ille qui scripsit, illis non mentientibus fallitur: sed tamen, ut dicere cœperam, si ea sententia fallitur, qua ædificet charitatem, quæ finis præcepti est, ita fallitur, ac si quisquam errore descrens viam, eo tamen per agrum pergat, quo etiam via illa perducit. Corrigendus est tamen, et quam sit utilius viam non deserere demonstrandum est, ne consuetudine deviandi etiam in transversum aut perversum ire cogatur.
But anyone who understands in the scriptures something other than that intended by them is deceived, although they do not lie. However, as I began to explain, if he is deceived in an interpretation which builds up charity, which is the end of the commandments, he is deceived in the same way as a man who leaves a road by mistake but passes through a field to the same place toward which the road itself leads. But he is to be corrected and shown that it is more useful not to leave the road, lest the habit of deviating force him to take a crossroad or a perverse way.Footnote 28
Reading, right or wrong, is a journey, but only reading rightly keeps to the via of truth and charity.
Thinking of reading as a road was also referenced in grammar texts foundational to medieval language theory. In the Institutiones, Priscian gives an etymology for litera: “Dicitur autem litera uel quasi legitera, quod legendi iter praebeat, uel a lituris, ut quibusdam placet, quod plerumque in ceratis tabulis antiqui scribere solebant” (It is called a “letter” either in likeness to legitera, because it offers a road for reading, or, as it pleases some, from “erasure,” because the ancients used to write mostly on wax tablets).Footnote 29 Isidore of Seville echoes this explanation in his Etymologiae: “Litterae autem dictae quasi legiterae, quod iter legentibus praestent, vel quod in legendo iterentur” (Letters are thus called as if from legiterae, because they offer a road for readers, or because they are reiterated in reading).Footnote 30 Alcuin's De grammatica presents a similar explanation.Footnote 31
These texts could have provided Geoffrey with the connection between pilgrimage and metaphoricity but not with the ideas of concealment and revelation, which are intimately related to transumptio as pilgrimage in the Poetria nova. Towards the end of the section on the ornatus graves, Geoffrey writes:
In the previously described forms, there is a kind of painting of color and a kind of gravity which is born when the matter does not go forth in the presence of all with a bare face, neither does its proper voice serve it, but rather an unfamiliar voice. Thus, as it were, it conceals itself with a cloud, yet a clear cloud. … Be weighty in a way that does not conceal the subject matter with a cloud; let the expressions hold fast to that to which they rightly belong. Discoverable words open a closed intellect, like keys to the mind. He who intends to open the closed subject matter should not draw a cloud over the words. To do so is to do wrong by the words, to make a lock out of a key. Therefore, be a key bearer and lay bare the subject matter through your words.Footnote 32
By adding a layer of meaning to the literal sense, transumptive language hides meaning or at least removes it a step or two from immediate accessibility. This is the import of the hidden face, the cloud (which I will address in the next part of the essay), and the lock and key.Footnote 33 Delayed accessibility, however, is not inaccessibility. The tension in Geoffrey's imagery means that the responsible use of transumptio hides but does not entirely prohibit comprehensibility. When executed well according to this standard, the weighty ornaments are powerful: “Procures istas epulas istosque liquores: / Hoc epulum satiat, hic potus inebriat aures” (lines 955–56) (Procure this feast and these spirits: this feast satisfies and this drink makes drunk the ears).
Although Geoffrey's discussion of transumptio concentrates around the section on the ornatus graves, it appears elsewhere in the treatise. In the section on amplification, he includes collatio (comparison), which can take place in two ways.Footnote 34 The apertus (open) way of comparison uses one of three signa (signs) to indicate its presence: magis (more), minus (less), or aeque (equal) (line 246). In the case of an occultus (concealed) comparison, however, the situation is different:
In the concealed comparison, no disclosing sign appears; it does not come forth with its proper countenance but with a disguised one, as if no comparison were there, but rather some kind of new transumption, wondrously grafted in, where it takes its place cautiously as if born of the theme.
This passage complicates the idea of concealment. The covert way of comparison is subtilis because it makes it seem as if there were no comparison at all. Covert comparisons are so subtle that they seem to be a matter of nature and not the work of the composer: they conceal their own methods of working. As Geoffrey notes, “Plus habet artis / Hic modus, est in eo longe sollemnior usus” (lines 262–63) (This method requires more skill, and its use is much more distinguished).Footnote 35
Later in the treatise, in keeping with the general concern for responsible use of rhetoric, Geoffrey notes the following about humor:
However, sometimes it is a color to eschew colors, except such as everyday speech and common discourse permit. Comic material refuses language belabored by art: it needs only plain language.
This particular use of planus has something in common with the description of the occult way of comparison. Covert comparisons, Geoffrey explained, are subtle because they conceal their presence and method of working. Their subtlety makes it seem as if there were no comparison in the text at all. The plain speech in the explanation of humor works in a similar way; even the figures that he includes in the example passage hide themselves through a kind of ordinariness. It is exactly in this sense that Geoffrey says, “est quandoque color vitare colores.” The apparent absence of color is itself a color because that absence is the rhetorical method by which the text takes effect.
In sum, therefore, for Geoffrey the key to the most powerful transumptive language is the fact that it combines displacement of meaning with the process of concealment and revelation. Although medieval rhetorical discourse can account for the first part of that equation, it cannot account for the second. Yet the Poetria nova is not the only medieval text to use pilgrimage as an image for the transumptive process. It is central to the liturgical drama known as the Officium peregrinorum, based on the gospel narrative of the journey to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35) and most commonly performed during Easter Monday vespers.Footnote 36 Although some studies have explored its literary qualities, much work remains to be done, and the fact that the drama makes pilgrimage the stage for hermeneutical engagement with metaphoric process has not yet been discussed.Footnote 37 Two details about the role of pilgrimage are key and are shared by each version. First, the drama takes up the single reference to pilgrimage in Luke and makes it a defining feature of performance. In the gospel text, when Christ first approaches the disciples and asks the cause of their sadness, Cleophas responds, “Tu solus peregrinus es in Jerusalem, et non cognovisti quæ facta sunt in illa his diebus?” (Luke 24:18) (What, art thou the only pilgrim in Jerusalem who has not heard of what has happened there in the last few days?). All of the versions of the drama reproduce this response. Cleophas calls Christ a peregrinus (παροικεῖς) because it was a pious practice for Jews to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the commemoration of Passover, which had taken place just before the crucifixion.
The manuscripts that include instructions for costuming take this reference to first-century Jewish practice and give it decidedly medieval garb. A record of a performance in Padua in the thirteenth century describes the disciples as wearing coats and cloaks and carrying staves, “ad modum Peregrinorum” (in the manner of pilgrims), and Christ as wearing a cloak and carrying a staff, also, “ad modum Peregrini.”Footnote 38 The twelfth-century version from the monastery of St-Benoît-sur-Loire at Fleury provides more detailed costume descriptions.Footnote 39 The disciples wear hoodless cloaks with hats and carry staves; Christ approaches barefoot, with a pilgrim's scrip and palm, wearing a tunic. Christ's status as a pilgrim is not just Cleophas's attribution (as it is in Luke) but almost described as an intentional disguise on Christ's part. The text opens, “Ad faciendam similitudinem Dominice Apparicionis in specie Peregrini” (In order to produce the likeness of Christ's appearance in the guise of a pilgrim).Footnote 40 Christ and the disciples appear as distinctly medieval pilgrims, and the costuming thus associates the Emmaus narrative with the medieval practice of pilgrimage.
The second key factor is the interpretation of metaphoric processes in the spatiotemporal setting of pilgrimage. In the gospel, Christ rebukes the disciples for having had only a literal understanding of the Old Testament figures of the crucifixion and resurrection, but the details of the explication are not recorded. Some of the versions reproduce this succinctness, but two versions elaborate extensively upon the exegetical activity of the journey. In the twelfth-century Beauvais text,Footnote 41 Christ says to the disciples:
This Moses had signified, with the striking down of the paschal lamb; Isaiah had predicted it, proclaiming him aloud as the lamb, scourged and yet silent, to remove the sins of the stricken. He was an offering, he says, as he willed, and bore our sins. This is the testimony of all the prophets: You should believe steadfastly in Christ, who loosed the bonds of death, who is alive unto everlasting.
Christ reads for the disciples the figure of the sacrificial lamb as they journey, this stanza being spoken in procession through the church.
In the Fleury text, the explication takes place when Christ breaks bread, disappears, and then reappears and hails the disciples three times with the “Pax uobis” greeting, which is incorporated into an antiphonal exchange with the choir. The first two responses are the first and second parts of Isaiah 63:1, read now as figures of Christ: “Quis est iste qui uenit de Edom, tinctis uestibus de Bosra?” (Who is this, coming from Edom, coming on the road from Bosra, with garments deep-dyed?), followed by, “iste formosus in stola sua, gradiens in multitudine fortitudinis suae?” (Who is this, so gaily clad, marching so valiantly?). The third response, from the festal liturgies of Easter week, ties these figures explicitly to the resurrection: “Surrexit Dominus de sepulcro, qui pro nobis pependit in ligno” (The Lord is risen from the tomb, who for us hung from the tree).
A few lines later, Christ begins to leave, and the “Discipuli autem appropinquant, pedetentim, incedentes, alternando hos uersus” (the disciples follow, proceeding step by step, alternating the following verses):
The New Adam leads the Old to heaven; the Creator makes anew the creatures. Mary mother of James, with Mary Magdalene and Mary Salome, brought ointments. The angel in white robes said to them, “The Lord is risen; death is trampled down.” Hell is broken, forsaken, and despoiled; the Victor himself brings back the spoils to heaven. His glorious form demonstrated this to the beloved disciples in Galilee. Their companion secretly along the way upbraided them; he unlocked the holy secrets of scripture. His proper form was not recognized by the disciples, but the breaking of bread restored clear light. To him be praise and glory.Footnote 42
This second journey complements the first. Having first walked to Emmaus in ignorance, Luke and Cleophas now walk, quite literally, in knowledge. With the juxtaposition of the Old and New Adam, these verses, set in procession, align the revelation of Christ's “proper” form with the activity of reading the Old Testament figuratively. At first, Christ's ordinary, pilgrim form conceals his true nature just as the literal sense of familiar Old Testament figures conceals the spiritual truths of the New. The disclosing of the one secret entails the disclosing of the other. To undertake the journey of this pilgrimage is to watch those means of concealment become the very means of revelation.
The Clear Cloud of Metaphor
In lines 1046–70 (quoted above) of the Poetria nova, Geoffrey brings in another image for the way that displacement of meaning in transumptio involves concealment and revelation: “Et sic se quasi nube tegit, sub nube serena” (Thus, as it were, it [that is, the intended sense] conceals itself with a cloud, yet a clear cloud). As with peregrinatio, the history of the image is located not in the discourse of rhetoric but in biblical commentary and hermeneutics. In a general way, nubes fills the same role as umbra and many other words used since the patristic period to describe the obscurity of scripture. Alan of Lille cites Psalm 18:12 to read nubes as “obscura intelligentia in Scripturis sacris” (obscure understanding in holy scriptures).Footnote 43 Rabanus Maurus understands the same verse as referring to the Old Testament prophets, since “occulta est scientia in prophetis” (knowledge is hidden in the prophets).Footnote 44 Hugh of St. Cher reads the phrase “fuerunt sub nube” in 1 Corinthians 10:1 as “sub figuris” (under figures). Such umbrae were the Israelites’ experience, he writes, but not ours, as Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 3:13.Footnote 45 Paul's own source for the image is the Old Testament itself, where God provides obscure and partial revelation of his presence to the Israelites through a cloud. Moses's encounter with God on Mount Sinai, for example, is one of the most prominent of those moments.
Yet the clouds of the Old Testament are not just metaphors or images — they are also themselves figures fulfilled by the cloud of the Transfiguration.Footnote 46 It is the third event (in chronological rather than church calendar order) associated with the feast of Epiphany or Theophany; the visit of the Magi and the Baptism in the Jordan are the first and second. All three have in common the revelation of Jesus as the Messiah. The biblical text of the Transfiguration offers a striking image taken up in both patristic and medieval commentary: “ecce nubes lucida obumbravit eos. Et ecce vox de nube, dicens: ‘Hic est Filius meus dilectus, in quo mihi bene complacui: ipsum audite’” (Matt. 17:5, emphasis mine) (a shining cloud overshadowed them. And now, there was a voice which said to them out of the cloud, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; to him, then, listen”).
Only Matthew includes the description of the cloud as lucidus (“clear,” “bright,” or “transparent”), but the adjective was powerful enough to be formational for commentary on each of the other gospel accounts. In the Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, Ambrose interprets the clear cloud as the Holy Spirit:
Diuini spiritus est obumbratio ista, quae non caligat affectibus hominum, sed reuelat occulta. Quae etiam alio conperta est loco dicente angelo: “et uirtus altissimi obumbrabit tibi” [Luke 1:35]. … Sed quoniam haec iam supra diximus, cognosce nubem istam non fumigantium esse montium nebuloso umore concretam et coacti aeris caliginem piceam, quae caelum tenebrarum horrore subtexat, sed lucidam nubem, quae nos non pluuialibus aquis et umentis adluuione imbris inmadidet, sed de qua mentes hominum uoce dei omnipotentes emissa fide ros rigauit.
This shadowing is the Holy Spirit, which does not darken the affections of men but reveals things that have been hidden. This is disclosed in another place through the angel saying: “the power of the most high will overshadow you.” … But because we speak now in a spiritual sense, understand this cloud is not a pitch-black mist of the air separated and condensed from the foggy moisture of smoking mountains, which can cover the sky with dread of darkness, but a clear cloud, which would not wet us with rainwater and overflowing of damp pouring rain, but from which the hearts of men are watered like fields through the faithfully sent word of the almighty God.Footnote 47
Similarly, Hugh of St. Cher describes the cloud in Luke 9:34 as a “nubes … lucida” (tom. 6, p. 187, col. 4) (clear cloud). He expands upon this idea further in commentary on Mark's account:
Nubens lucida est gratia, quae mentem illuminat, et refrigerat. … Haec nubes obumbrat, dum Deus loquitur intus in corde per inspirationem, vel exterius in corpore per flagellationem, vel in aure per praedicationem. (tom. 6, p. 104, col. 3)
The clear cloud is grace, which illuminates and restores the mind. … This cloud overshadows when God is spoken within the heart through inspiration, or outwardly in the body through affliction, or to the hearing through preaching.
In this passage, Hugh of St. Cher reads carefully the paradox built into the idea of a clear cloud. The cloud both overshadows, obumbrat, and illuminates, illuminat. Together, those effects reveal Christ as the Son of God.
Although the clear cloud is a potent image in medieval hermeneutics, the Transfiguration did not acquire the same status in the visual arts in the West as other biblical scenes, such as the Annunciation or Nativity. Even as a feast day it never attained to the same prominence; it was recognized officially only in 1475. This difference is especially noticeable when compared to the Eastern traditions, as scholars of art history, including Émile Mâle and Gertrud Schiller, have noted.Footnote 48 Nevertheless, it was used in manuscript illuminations and church mosaics and frescoes and largely followed the iconographic patterns of Eastern design (typified by the mosaic located above the altar in St. Catherine's monastery in Sinai). In (see Figure 1), for example, the cloud is represented by a mandorla, with beams of light emanating to Moses (left), Elijah (right), and the three disciples (bottom). (see Figure 2), from the Caesar Master Hours, is a later image, but it represents beautifully the continuation of the standard iconographic tradition from the earliest Christian centuries. In this depiction, the beams of light from Christ emanate more generally; Moses (left) holds an open book, signifying the tables of the law; the apostles gaze at Christ in wonder; and Peter (center) holds a speech scroll emanating from his index finger signifying that he speaks in the scene.Footnote 49 The scroll unfurls towards Christ, the addressee, standing on the mount within a mandorla. Although the inscription is damaged in the manuscript, Peter's offer to build three booths can be made out.Footnote 50 The composition of these images produces in visual form the process of the disciples’ reaction to the transformation. From the foot of the mount and the disciples’ humble awe (indicated by their supine posture), the eye is carried up, through Peter's gaze and his words, to the summit of the mount and to Christ in his glorified, heavenly form.
Figure 1: The Transfiguration. From a psalter produced in Oxford between 1200 and 1220. Reproduced with permission. © The British Library Board, Royal MS 1 D X f. 4.
Figure 2: The Caesar Master Hours. Produced in Oxford or London, 1460. Reproduced with permission. © The British Library Board BL Add. MS 62523 f. 32v.
The visual dimension of the narrative took on a signifying power of its own in biblical commentary. The Transfiguration was commemorated as a moment of God's divine revelation, but it was also understood first as a moment of concealment. The three disciples see Christ transfigured, but not in his fullness. Ambrose writes eloquently on this point:
Et haec enim mysteria sunt et referuntur altius; etenim pro tua possibilitate tibi uerbum aut minuitur aut crescit, ac nisi altioris prudentiae cacumen ascendas, non tibi apparet sapientia, non tibi apparet mysteriorum cognitio, non tibi apparet quanta sit gloria, quanta sit species in dei uerbo, sed dei uerbum quasi quodam apparet in corpore non habens suam speciem neque decorem et apparet quasi homo in plaga, qui ferre possit infirmitates nostras, apparet tibi quasi quidam sermo natus ex homine litterarum opertus inuolucris, uirtute spiritus non refulgens. (7.12)
And here indeed loftier mysteries are related. For truly, according to your ability, the word is either diminished or increases to you, but you may not yet ascend the summit of higher discretion. Wisdom does not appear to you, the knowledge of mysteries does not appear to you, nor does it appear to you how great the glory is, how great the form in the Word of God. Rather, the Word of God appears somehow as if in a body having neither his own form nor beauty; and he appears as a man in affliction, who shall bear our infirmities; he appears to you as a certain utterance born of man, concealed in the wrappings of letters, his spirit not shining in full power.
Despite the revelation of the Transfiguration, Christ is still concealed by his human nature and by the “letter” (as opposed to the spirit). Christ, Moses, and Elijah must be “overshadowed,” Hugh of St. Cher writes, because until the fullness of time, mortal human beings will not be able to sustain the splendor of the light (“fulgorem non poterunt sustinere”) (tom. 6, p. 187, col. 4.). According to Rabanus, a cloud can indicate the “protectio Dei.” Of Moses's encounter with the face of God on Mount Sinai, he writes, “quod cum aliquis ad contemplationis altitudinem pertingit, necesse est ut ei protectio divina assit, ne aberret” (thus, when someone attains to the height of contemplation, it is necessary that God's protection be at hand, so that he go not astray). Of the nubes candida of Revelation 14:14, Pierre Bersuire writes in his Repertorium morale, “Item ibi fuit claritas ipsius obscurata. Claritas enim solis justitiae tanta erat, quod debilitas humani visus ipsum videre no poterat, nisi nube carnis humane mediante” (Thus clarity itself is rendered obscured. So great was the clarity of the sun of justice, that the weakness of man's vision was not able to look upon him, unless through the mediating cloud of human flesh).Footnote 51 Similarly, Hugh of St. Cher says the cloud of the Transfiguration should be understood mystically as Christ's human flesh: “sicut sol sub nube absconditur, ita Christus in carne, Isa. 45[:15], ‘Vere tu es Deus absconditus, Deus Israel Salvator’” (tom. 6, p. 187, col. 4) (just as the sun is hidden beneath a cloud, so was Christ in flesh, as it says in Isaiah, “Truly, God of Israel, our Saviour, thou art a God of hidden ways”).Footnote 52 Thus, even in one of the greatest moments of revelation, Christ's human form is understood partially to serve a self-concealing function.Footnote 53
The clear cloud is not just about concealment and revelation in general; the fact that Moses and Elijah appear with Christ made the Transfiguration a moment that condenses the entirety of the hermeneutic process itself. The significance of the Old Testament figures was recognized early in commentary. As Ambrose writes, “inde apparent Moyses et Helias, hoc est lex et propheta cum uerbo; neque enim lex potest esse sine uerbo neque propheta nisi qui de dei filio prophetauit” (7.10) (thereafter appeared Moses and Elijah, that is, the Law and the Prophet[s] with the Word; for the law can be nothing without the Word, neither did the prophet prophesy except of the Son of God). Hugh of St. Cher observes that not only the appearance but also the disappearance of Moses and Elijah are meaningful. Mystically, they signify that Christ is the “head” (caput) of the Law and of the Prophets, and furthermore, that they are perfected in Christ, have their beginning in Christ, and are bound by Christ (tom. 6, p. 188, col. 1.).Footnote 54 Hugh uses Paul's vocabulary to explain that the simultaneous departure of the cloud and of Moses and Elijah is allegorically significant because “Apostoli enim Judaei fuerunt, et eis fuit velata Scriptura” (tom. 6, p. 59, col. 4.) (the Apostles were indeed Jews, and to them the scriptures were veiled). Only after the lifting of this veil can they truly see Christ.
Not only does the presence of Moses and Elijah miraculously confirm that Jesus is the promised Messiah; it also testifies specifically to his death and resurrection. Luke's account is the only one of the three to include this detail, and, for Ambrose, it signifies not only the conversation held on the mountain but the entire “speaking” throughout time of the Law and the Prophets about Christ's ministry: “Docent enim te de excessu eius mysteria. Et hodie Moyses docet et hodie Helias loquitur et hodie in maiore gloria Moysen uidere possumus” (7.11) (Indeed, they teach to you the mysteries of his death. Today Moses teaches, and today Elijah speaks, and today we can see Moses in a greater glory). The idea of experiencing the Transfiguration “today” is also expressed powerfully in the excerpts chosen by Aquinas in the Catena in Matthaeum.Footnote 55 For Origen, to perceive Christ in the Old Testament is to behold the Transfiguration for oneself: “Si quis etiam intelligit spiritualem legem convenientem sermonibus Iesu, et in prophetis absconditam Christi sapientiam; ille vidit Moysen et Eliam in gloria una cum Iesu” (However, if any man discerns a spiritual sense in the Law agreeing with the teaching of Jesus, and in the Prophets finds “the hidden wisdom of Christ,” [1 Cor. 2:7] he beholds Moses and Elias in the same glory with Jesus).Footnote 56 Indeed, the clear cloud itself testifies to the same possibility: “dicam etiam salvatorem nostrum esse lucidam nubem, quae obumbrat Evangelium et legem et prophetas; sicut intelligunt qui possunt aspicere lumen ipsius in praemissis” (I may also venture to call the Saviour that bright cloud which overshadows the Gospel, the Law, and the Prophets, as they understand who can behold His light in all these three).Footnote 57 Remigius of Auxerre echoes the idea: “Dicit ergo ipsum audite, ac si aliis verbis diceret: recedant umbrae legales, et typi prophetarum; et solum coruscum lumen Evangelii sequamini” (He says therefore, “Hear Him,” as much as to say, “Let the shadow of the Law be past, and the types of the Prophets, and follow ye the one shining light of the Gospel”).Footnote 58
The presence of the Law and the Prophets as well as the clear cloud make the Transfiguration an organizing image for the hermeneutics of spiritual reading, that is, reading of the non-proper senses. Indeed, Bersuire takes the cloud to signify the style of scripture itself:
Secundo signat puritatem diuinae scripturae. Nam sicut nubes habet quandam obscuritatem exterius, continet tamen ignem et claritatem interius, et inde, quod est ipsa quandoque pluit, quandoque tonat, quandoque coruscat, quandoque fulgurat interius, sic sancta scriptura exterius in apparentia rudis et obscura videtur scilicet quantum ad litteram et historicam ruditatem, et tamen constat, quod ipsa continet interius claritatem summae scientiae et doctrinae quantum ad mysticam veritatem.
The second [sense] signifies the purity of divine scripture. For just as a cloud has a kind of more outward obscurity, nevertheless within it encloses fire and brightness, and thence it is that at any time it rains, at any time it thunders, at any time it quakes, at any time it lightnings within. Thus, holy scripture outwardly in appearance is naturally seen as unpolished and obscure according to the literal and historical crudeness. And yet it is fitting that it itself contains within the brightness of highest knowledge and doctrine, according to mystical truth.Footnote 59
For Bersuire, even the humble style of scripture itself is a cloud through which the glories of eternal truth can be perceived. The paradox of the clear cloud is the juncture of concealment and revelation through the agency of something that is deceptively ordinary or simple in its literal or proper sense.
Reading with receptivity to the non-proper senses is not just an intellectual activity — the vision was recognized in a wide variety of commentary as spiritually overwhelming for the three disciples. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all agree that Peter responds by offering to build three tabernacles; at the appearance of the cloud and the voice, however, the disciples become afraid. Matthew reports that they fell on their faces.Footnote 60 Mark offers an additional observation on Peter's offer, of interest to commentators: “Non enim sciebat quid diceret: erant enim timore exterriti” (Mark 9:5) (He did not know what to say, for they were overcome with fear). Before looking more closely at the quality and character of the disciples’ reaction, especially Peter's, it is important first to note the cause. Many commentators are at pains to emphasize that nothing in Christ's substance changed during the Transfiguration, only his appearance and the disciples’ ability to recognize something that had been a part of his substance all along. Speculation on the quality and nature of the light was of especial concern to Aquinas. He cites from Jerome, for example, the following warning:
Nemo autem putet pristinam eum formam et faciem perdidisse, vel amisisse corporis veritatem, et assumpsisse corpus spirituale vel aereum. … Ubi splendor faciei ostenditur, et candor describitur vestium, non substantia tollitur, sed gloria commutatur. … Transformatio splendorem addidit, faciem non subtraxit.
Let none suppose that He lost His former form and lineaments, or laid aside His bodily reality, taking upon Him a spiritual or ethereal Body. … For that His face is said to shine, and His raiment described to become white, does not take away substance, but confers glory. … The transformation enhanced the brightness, but did not destroy the countenance.Footnote 61
Bede echoes the idea expressed by Jerome: “Transfiguratus igitur salvator, non substantiam verae carnis amisit, sed gloriam futurae, vel suae, vel nostrae resurrectionis ostendit” (Our Saviour then when transfigured did not lose the substance of real flesh, but shewed forth the glory of His own or of our future resurrection).Footnote 62 Hugh of St. Cher cites Jerome's commentary in the sections on both Mark's and Luke's accounts.Footnote 63 The wonder of the Transfiguration, then, is not that anything in Christ's substance changed but rather that the disciples’ knowledge thereof changed. The reasoning is partly a product of orthodox Incarnational theology, but it also runs parallel to the principle of the historicity or literalness of the figure. When Christ fulfills the figures of the Old Testament, nothing in the substance of those figures changes, but they are understood in a new and fuller way. The disciples’ fear and wonder, therefore, are explicitly made the product of retroactive recognition and understanding.
Peter's confusion was sometimes read negatively as spiritual blindness, but many commentaries also recognized that he could not help but be moved by what he saw. Ambrose calls Peter's devotion premature (“praematura deuotio”) but also commends it: “Delectatus est Petrus: et quem saeculi huius illecebrosa non caperent, gloria resurrectionis illexit” (7.18) (Peter was overcome with joy, and since the alluring things of this world could not hold him, the glory of the resurrection carried him away).Footnote 64 Bede explains that Peter did not know what to say “prae stupore humanae fragilitatis” (from the stupor of human frailty), nevertheless, “insiti tamen sibi dat affectus indicium” (still he gives a proof of the feelings which were within him). In expressing affectus, Peter forgets his earthbound state: “nec recordatus est se suosque coapostolos mortali adhuc carne circumseptos immortalis vitae statum subire non posse; cui etiam mente excesserat quia in domo patris quae in caelis est, domus manufacta necessaria non sit” (he did not remember that he and his fellow Apostles were still hemmed in by mortal flesh and could not bear the state of immortal life, to which his soul had already carried him away, because in our Father's house in heaven, a house made with hands is not needed).Footnote 65 By the revelation of transfigured glory, Peter's spirit had lifted him (“excesserat”) beyond the physical world. As Remigius of Auxerre writes, “Visa domini maiestate et duorum servorum, Petrus adeo delectatus est ut cuncta temporalia oblivioni traderet, et ibi in perpetuum vellet manere” (At this view of the majesty of the Lord, and His two servants, Peter was so delighted, that, forgetting everything else in the world, he would abide here for ever).Footnote 66
The common thread in these passages is that Peter speaks from an out-of-body state. His devotion may be premature, but it is genuine. In his mind, he is carried away from the literal to the spiritual sense, from figure to fulfillment, from the limits of the physical to the glory of heaven. He is even, as Hugh of St. Cher puts it, drunk: Peter speaks “quasi ebrius de una gutta vini caelestis, quam biberat, vel viderat, volebat facere tres tabernas” (tom. 6, p. 186, col. 3.) (as if drunk from one drop of heavenly wine which he drank, or rather saw, and wanted to make three tabernacles). Peter drinks in the vision, and even this una gutta vini caelestis is beyond his capacity to handle. The description is remarkable and parallel to Geoffrey's description of successful metaphoricity: “Procures istas epulas istosque liquores: / Hoc epulum satiat, hic potus inebriat aures” (lines 955–56) (Procure this feast and these spirits: this feast satisfies and this drink makes drunk the ears).
Conclusion
Whether or not Geoffrey of Vinsauf drew directly from the Latin liturgical dramas of the Emmaus narrative or the commentaries and depictions related to the Transfiguration, the extent and significance of peregrinatio and the nubes serena in those contexts reveals that they wielded a broadly iconographic power as organizing images for the hermeneutics of metaphoricity and its affective potential. It is no coincidence that Geoffrey uses such curious, and seemingly unrelated, images together. Both peregrinatio and the nubes serena serve to convey what he considers the key qualities of transumptio. He consistently commends the kind of ornamentation that appears natural, artless, even familiar. Transumptive language accomplishes this effect not only by displacing meaning from the ordinary to the extra-ordinary, but by concealing its own meaning and methods. By virtue of that deceptively simple appearance, such language is uniquely poised to seize the reader unawares with the weight of its true significance. When the text “conceals itself with a cloud, yet a clear cloud,” when it takes us on a journey to an unforeseen, otherworldly place, the effect can be surprisingly overwhelming.
Ultimately, it is a fuller understanding of the Poetria nova that is at stake. Geoffrey may have written the treatise partly for his immediate audience of elementary students, but it was thoroughly appreciated by more mature communities of readers and writers for centuries afterwards. While it laid out in succinct fashion the most important precepts of formal rhetorical training in the Middle Ages, the subtlety and richness of Geoffrey's writing left much for poets to study, decipher, and emulate. Limiting our own study of the Poetria nova to its sources in, influence on, and relationships to other texts in the history of rhetoric prevents us from recognizing that Geoffrey was by no means restricted to previous treatises — medieval or classical — for his ideas. Indeed, theological and hermeneutical discourse would have been an obvious trove of imagery and ideas for any scholar who wished to address metaphoricity. Studying the Poetria nova as a work of poetry in its own right can thus help expand what we recognize as likely sources and influences for medieval rhetorical thought. Filling in the gaps in that complex web of sources and influences can, in turn, shed light on what poets — and not just later writers of rhetorical treatises — saw in Geoffrey's work. To say that the Poetria nova is a masterful work is nothing new, but his rhetorical knowledge and explanatory skill and wit are not the only qualities that would have attracted a medieval poet. Geoffrey does not limit himself to describing how to build a text with affective energy — he does so himself. By deploying the imagery of peregrinatio and the nubes serena with delicacy and elegance, he not only cites but augments their transporting power, allowing his readers to see familiar images in a new and startling light.
