1 The Exegetical Tradition

With the exception of Maurmann, the majority of previous scholarship on the cardinal points in exegesis has been narrow in scope.5See p. 000 above. These studies have, by and large, focused on a specific subset of directions, normally either the north, or east and west, and sought to establish a unified exegetical image through a logic of oppositional pairs and grounded in cosmological metaphors.6Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 117–18, 166. For east and west, see Mauntel, ‘Competing with the East’, 16; Fischer, Europa, 59–75; Lapina, Warfare and the Miraculous, 129–30; and Wolever, ‘Translatio imperii’, 247–65. For north and south, see Vegard Skånland, ‘Calor fidei’, Symbolae Osloenses 32, no. 1 (1956): 86–92, and Fraesdorff, Norden, 114–29. My approach here will be somewhat different. The aim is to evaluate the theological significance of the cardinal points on a broader level so as to establish the conceptual field that lay open to the medieval author, paying particular attention not only to the dominant exegetical image, but also the discordant possibilities they offered. I will be engaging with the cardinal points in the first instance as a linguistic and conceptual system, connected by a Wittgensteinian notion of family resemblance. Wittgenstein’s core insight here is that for any particular everyday word like ‘game’, all its various uses (e.g. gambling, chess or children playing with a ball) need not have any one single thing in common that makes them all ‘games’. Instead, they are often connected by a collection of similarities, in the way that different members of a family can typically be recognised by some combination of build, eye colour, facial structure, temperament and so on, without each member needing to share one particular feature. This chapter will focus, therefore, on the concrete ideas, phrases and tropes that developed around the terms for the cardinal directions in exegetical texts, and rather than seeking out a single central concept or grounding metaphor, it will instead look to characterise the ‘complex network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing’ that underlie the concrete use of this terminology.7Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §§66–7, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), 36; on familial resemblance, see David G. Stern, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), chs 1–2, esp. 10–11, 50–1, 54–5. Cf. Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, 15–19, who likewise makes use of Wittgenstein, but in the context of Analytical Thomism. On the latter, see Stephen Mulhall, The Great Riddle: Wittgenstein and Nonsense, Theology and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), ch. 1.

We can begin with a summative characterisation of the meaning of the four cardinal points as they are normally discussed and work backwards from there to their use in particular, concrete circumstances. The German literature has developed a highly schematic framework for understanding of the four cardinal points as subdivided into two opposing groups. Lactantius offers a characteristic exposition of this framework in the Divine Institutes: the north and west are characterised by the darkness and cold of the sun’s setting and absence, while the east and south are joined by light and heat of the sun’s rising and presence.8Lactantius, Diuinae institutiones 2.9, ed. Eberhard Heck and Antonie Wosok, 4 vols (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2005–11), 1:164. Cf. Fraesdorff, Norden, 113; Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 201; Fischer, Europa, 72. Unsurprisingly, the dominant associations are negative for the former and positive for the latter. But this is hardly the whole story, as a closer look at the textual, historical and conceptual construction of this picture reveals. I will focus specifically on the Ordinary Gloss of the Bible in this chapter as it offers a useful way into the received exegetical environment of the first half of the twelfth century. Although certainly not representative of the entire Latin exegetical tradition, nor even of the twelfth century, this text has two significant advantages. First, it represents an explicit attempt to develop a synthetic compilation of the authoritative exegetical tradition, and would itself achieve a similarly authoritative status by the latter half of the century. Second, its fragmentary nature through the abbreviation of a vast quantity of authoritative texts serves to highlight the particular linguistic formulae that constitute the exegetical understanding of this terminology.

The use of the Glossa ordinaria is a tricky and delicate business.9See generally Lesley Smith, The Glossa Ordinaria: The Making of a Medieval Bible Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2009). It has long been agreed that it developed principally around the school of Laon, under Anselm of Laon, from the early twelfth century, yet its production was complex and remains, even still, not well understood.10Smith, Glossa, 17–38, 141–80; Guy Lobrichon, ‘Une nouveauté: Les gloses de la Bible’, in Le Moyen Age et la Bible, ed. Pierre Riché and Guy Lobrichon (Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1984), 103–10; Alexander Andrée, ‘Glossed Bibles’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Latin Bible, ed. Houghton, 208–24; Alexander Andrée, Glossa Ordinaria in Lamentations Ieremie Prophete Prothemata et Liber 1: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and a Translation (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell Int., 2005), 20–7. Large portions of the gloss are attributed to Anselm, his brother Ralph of Laon and Gilbert of Auxerre (Universalis), although these attributions are frequently tenuous, as, with the exception of Gilbert on Lamentations, there is very little internal evidence by which to identify the primary actors involved.11Smith, Glossa, 26–33; Andrée, Glossa in Lamentations, 20–1; E. Ann Matter, ‘The Church Fathers and the Glossa Ordinaria’, in The Reception of the Church Fathers, ed. Irena Backus, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 83–111. The case becomes even more complicated when we consider that, although the initial compilation very likely took place in Laon and Auxerre, there is good reason to believe that the text was subsequently compiled in Paris and particularly at Saint Victor, where it was undoubtedly widely copied and disseminated.12Smith, Glossa, 141–53; Andrée, Glossa in Lamentations, 24–7.

Beyond the who and where of their production, the meat of the material that makes up the glosses, particularly in the more heavily commented books, comes from the major Latin Fathers: Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great and Bede, although typically through the filter of Carolingian anthologies.13Smith, Glossa, 41; Matter, ‘Church Fathers’, 87–8, passim; Alexander Andrée, ‘Anselm of Laon Unveiled: The Glosae Svper Iohannem and the Origins of the Glossa Ordinaria on the Bible’, Mediaeval Studies 73 (2011): 222. The major Carolingian commentaries of figures like Walafrid Strabo, Rabanus Maurus and John Scottus Eriugena are likewise significant in their own right, as are some contemporary contributions by figures like Gilbert and Anselm. Identification of these sources is not easy, since the glosses only intermittently identify sources and these attributions, often added by later scholars, are often untrustworthy.14Smith, Glossa, 41–72; Andrée, ‘Anselm of Laon Unveiled’, 222. The use of authors is also inconsistent, as each book naturally has its own major commentaries, not to mention the selective eye of the relevant compiler, which results in a variable use of the Fathers.15Matter, ‘Church Fathers’, 95. Finally, the Glossa was only properly compiled as a singular work in the age of printing and beyond Song of Songs, there is no modern critical edition. As a result, the editio princeps by Adolph Rusch of Strasburg from 1480/1, which reflects a relatively stable twelfth-century text, has become the standard edition for scholarly use.16Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria, 4 vols (Strasbourg: Adolf Rusch, 1480/1) [hereafter Glossa]. It is accessible in facsimile: Karlfried Froehlich and Margaret T. Gibson, eds, Biblia Latina cum glossa ordinaria: facsimile reprint of the editio princeps Adolph Rusch of Strassburg 1480/81, 4 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992) and a copy has been digitalised by the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha der Universität Erfurt. A digital edition of Rusch, under the direction of Martin Morard, is accessible at https://gloss-e.irht.cnrs.fr/ (accessed September 14, 2023). All citations follow the foliation of Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek Gotha der Universität Erfurt, Goff B607. On the use of Rusch, see Smith, Glossa, 13, 187–92.

With this in mind, this chapter will address the exegetical construction of the cardinal points both schematically and genealogically over two major sections. The first section will address, in a fairly conservative manner, how exegetes treated the cardinal points according to the various modes of literal and spiritual interpretation. This will focus particularly on the use of language and show how exegetes formed a conceptual network around the vocabulary of the cardinal points, which could be adapted to a variety of different contexts. A brief interlude will then offer some critical reflections on the role of space in allegorical exegesis, focusing specifically on Hugh of Saint Victor’s discussion of the interpretation of space in his Ark tracts. The second section will then address the use of the cardinal directions as historical categories. In particular, it will focus on the use of the cardinal points as a way of thinking about Jews and Gentiles within Christian theology from the Fathers down to the Carolingians. It will then chart the interpretation of one biblical passage (Rv 21:13) to show how the use of allegorical interpretations of the cardinal directions had changed since the Carolingian period. This will more broadly contextualise the way in which allegorical interpretations of the cardinal points were received in the twelfth century.

From its very inception, the distinction between letter and spirit has been fundamental to Christian exegesis.24Dahan, L’exégèse, 435–44; van Liere, Introduction, 119–20. There are various terms for both, e.g., letter or history for the former and spirit, mystery or allegory for the latter. While these can take on more specific meanings, they are normally used interchangeably when in reference to the twofold interpretation. Cf. de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 2:24, 41. The idea, which predates Christianity itself and is already applied within the epistles of Paul (Gal 4:21ff.), was already being systematised among the ante-Nicaean Fathers, especially Origen.25Smalley, Study of the Bible, ch. 1; de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 2:ch. 1; Dahan, L’exégèse, chs 5–6, esp. 239. It potentially predates Christianity in Pagan allegory and certainly in Jewish authors like Philo of Alexandria, but their exact relationship with Christianity is a matter of contention. Smalley implies a general continuity (1–7), though focuses specifically on Philo, whereas de Lubac argues strenuously for a decisive discontinuity between Christian and Pagan allegory, casting Philo somewhere in-between (2:2–5, 2:16–19, passim); for a more moderate view, see Dahan, L’exégèse, 368–73 and for a more general discussion, see J. F. Procopé, ‘Greek Philosophy, Hermeneutics and Alexandrian Understanding of the Old Testament’, in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, ed. Magne Sæbø, vol. 1, pt. 1 (Göttingen: VandenHoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 451–77. In a Christian context, this idea of a spiritual sense developed on top of a notion of the overabundance of meaning inherent uniquely in scripture.26Origen (trans. Jerome), Homiliae XIV In Ezechielem 4, PL 25, 720D, e.g., compares it with a vast forest and a great ocean; cf. Origen (trans. Rufinus), In Exodum homiliae 9.1, ed. Wilhelm Adolf Baehrens, Homilien zum Hexateuch in Rufins Übersetzung, pt. 1 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1920), 235. See generally de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 1:75–82. For de Lubac, the relationship of these senses is paradigmatically sacramental and exemplified in Origen’s equation of the two senses of scripture with the two natures of Christ.27de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 2:19–27; Origen (trans. Rufinus), In Leuiticum homiliae 1.1, ed. Baehrens, Homilien zum Hexateuch, 280, trans. Gary Wayne Barkley, Homilies on Leviticus (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 29: ‘Nam sicut ibi carnis, ita hic litterae velamine tegitur, ut littera quidem adspiciatur tamquam caro, latens vero intrinsecus spiritalis sensus tamquam divinitas sentiatur’ (For just as there [in the incarnation] it [the Word of God] is covered with the veil of flesh, so here [in the prophets and law] with the veil of the letter, so that the letter is seen as flesh, whereas the spiritual sense hiding within is perceived as divinity). Jerome likewise compares the scriptures to Christ in his Tractatus lix in psalmos 147.14, ed. G. Morin, CCSL 78 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1958), 337–8; Smalley, Study of the Bible, 1. Out of this basic bipartite model, the standard three and fourfold constructions emerge through the further subdivision of the spiritual level into two or three categories.28de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 2:25–6; cf. Gilbert Dahan, ‘Genres, Forms and Various Methods in Christian Exegesis of the Middle Ages’, in Sæbø, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, vol. 1, pt. 2, 226n118. First there is the division of allegory, in which one thing signifies another thing, and tropology, where something signifies a normative principle.29Cf. Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis Christianae fidei 1.prol.4, PL 176, 184D–185A. Then within allegory there is the further division between allegory proper and anagogy, the distinction being one of direction, with the former referring to a horizontal connection between things in the world and the latter being a vertical, linking earthly to heavenly.30G. R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Earlier Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 114–22. There was no general agreement, however, among medieval authors about the exact relationship of these different levels. For instance, some amalgamate the two sides of allegory into one, as when Robert of Melun argued that anagogy is formally contained within allegory; conversely an anonymous from the school of Saint Victor grouped literal and allegorical together as the ‘cognition of truth’ and contrasted this with the ‘form of virtue’ in tropology.31As cited by de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 1:9 and 2:127, see 1:ch. 2 and 2:19–27 for further formulae.

Despite their later canonical status, these systems are largely artificial, representing various attempts at schematisation, which can only partially reflect the actual practices of exegesis. Indeed, in his De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris, Hugh of Saint Victor combines two, three and potentially even four-part models within the span of a single chapter.32Hugh of Saint Victor, De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris 3, PL 175, 11D–12C [hereafter HoSV, De scrip.]; cf. de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 1:112–14. As a result, we should not attempt to force all of medieval exegesis through a traditional four-part model, but focus on the more fundamental division between historical and allegorical readings, both of which encompass a variety of possible exegetical strategies.33Dahan, L’exégèse, 435–44. Hence, rather than attempting to recreate or follow any particular medieval precedent for formalisation, I will instead use terms like literal, moral and allegorical as pragmatic categories held together by a general familial resemblance.

Both in the Middle Ages and in modern scholarship, it is the literal sense, not the spiritual, that has seen the most polemically charged discussion. History has been considered the foundation of Christian exegesis since the early Fathers. Origen, again, expresses the point clearly: ‘first of all, let us see what is reported about [the Ark] according to the letter, … so that, when we have laid down this sort of foundation, we may be able to ascend from text of history to the mystical and allegorical sense of spiritual understanding’.34Origen (trans. Rufinus), Homiliae in Genesin 2.1 (ed. Peter Habermehl, Homilien zum Hexateuch in Rufins Übersetzung, pt. 1, Die Homilien zu Genesis, 2nd ed. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 36): ‘primo omnium uideamus, quae de ea [viz. arca] secundum litteram referuntur … ut, cum huiuscemodi fundamenta iecerimus, ab historiae textu possimus adscendere ad spiritalis intelligentiae mysticum et allegoricum sensum’. Cf. Augustine, Sermones de vetere testamento 2.4 (ed. C. Lambot, CCSL 41 (Turnout: Brepols, 1961), 12); Jerome, Commentarii in Esaiam 6.pref (ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 73 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963), 223). For more examples, see de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 2:41–50. The exact status of historical exegesis, however, is a significant point of dispute. Anglophone historians have tended to downplay the value of allegory as compared with literal exegesis. This attitude is exemplified by Smalley’s description of the classical distich: ‘Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, / Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia’, as ‘the old formulae decrying the literal sense as inferior to the spiritual’.35Augustine of Dacia, Rotulus pugillaris 1, ed. A. Walz, Angelicum 6 (1929): 256, trans. as in van Liere, Introduction, 121: ‘The letter teaches events, allegory what you should believe, / The moral sense teaches what you should do, anagogy what you should strive for’. Smalley, ‘The Bible in the Medieval Schools’, in Lampe, ed., History of the Bible, 215. Smalley makes the same point in Study of the Bible, 295, which is directly and pointedly criticised by de Lubac (Medieval Exegesis, 2:59). A microcosm of this debate is seen in the interpretation of Hugh of Saint Victor’s exegetical practice.36Compare Smalley, Study of the Bible, ch. 3 and de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 3:ch. 4. Similarly, Sønnesyn’s critique of Southern’s suggestion that Hugh stands in discontinuity with his theological predecessors and peers (Sønnesyn, ‘Eternity in Time’, 77–96). Hugh himself set out a strong invective against those who, styling themselves ‘teachers of allegory’ (allegoriarum … doctores), rush straight into allegorical interpretation while ignoring the letter.37HoSV, De scrip. 5, PL 175, 13A–B. See also Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon 6.3, ed. Ch.-H. Buttimer (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1939), 114 [hereafter HoSV, Didas.]. Cf. Dahan, L’exégèse, 239. Taken at face value, this does suggests some disregard for the letter in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. There is indeed some truth to the idea that, especially prior the twelfth century, the historical level appeared unproblematic and required little effort to expound.38de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 2:74–5; Evans, Language, 67. Hugh may also be responding to a certain loosening of the connection between allegorical exegesis and the biblical text evident among his generation of exegetes.39See p. 000 below. It will suffice to recognise both Hugh’s eminently traditional intent and his new methodological rigour on this point.40Dahan, L’exégèse, 240; Marie-Dominique Chenu, ‘Les deux âges de l’allégorisme scripturaire au moyen âge’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 18 (1951): 24 (cited affirmatively by de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 3:212). Following Hugh, we can gather a notion of the depth of literal interpretation, particularly as it developed in the twelfth century. According to Hugh, there are, perhaps mirroring the spiritual sense, three aspects of literal interpretation: littera, sensus and sententia.41HoSV, Didas. 6.8–11, ed. Buttimer, 125–9. The littera is a study of the specific syntax and semantics of the words themselves, such as grammatical and linguistic clarifications or textual criticism; the sensus constitutes a study of the signification of words and sentences, and a study of the historical context of the passage more broadly; finally, the sententia, sometimes grouped with sensus, involves the deeper meaning or ideological content of a passage, uncovered through philosophical and theological analysis.42Dahan, L’exégèse, ch. 5; Dahan, ‘Genres, Forms and Methods’, 227; Smalley, Study of the Bible, 94; de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 2:79.

The most common discussion of the cardinal points at the literal level has to do with clarifying or informing the reader about relevant historical and geographical facts. On the most basic level, this involved adding simple contextual information. It can be fairly incidental to the passage itself, as in Zechariah 14:8, where the interlinear gloss explains that the ‘eastern sea’ is that ‘which is called dead, because nothing can live in those waters’.51Glossa 3:298r: ‘mare orientale’; ‘quod mortuum dicitur, eo quod in eis aquis nihil possit uiuere’. See also the glosses describing boundaries in Nm 34:6–7 (Glossa 1:183r). Or it can be the other way around, as in Deuteronomy 11:24, where various geographical boundaries are glossed with directions.52Glossa 1:195r. This can become very complicated, as with the descriptions of the division of the Holy Land in Ezekiel 47 and 48.53See esp. Ez 47:15, 18; 48:1 (Glossa 3:231r–231v). These geographical and historical notes can also point to a broader underlying conception of the world, as when, for example, commenting on: ‘this man was great among all the people of the east’ (Jb 1:3), the interlinear gloss intensifies the sentiment with an evocation of the exotic east: ‘that is, richer than the rich, since it is well known that easterners are exceedingly rich’.54Glossa 2:188r: ‘eratque uir ille magnus inter omnes orientales’; ‘id est ditior diuitibus, quia orientales constat esse prediuites’. See also, 1 Kg 25:1 (Glossa 2:20v). These descriptions can also play an integral role in establishing the meaning of the passage, as ‘O, O flee from the land of the north, says the Lord’ (Zec 2:6), only makes sense once you understand its historical context: ‘The Assyrian and Babylonians, who devastated the people of God, lived near the site of Jerusalem in the land of the north’.55Glossa 3:291r: ‘o o o fugite de terra aquilonis dicit dominus’; ‘Iuxta situm hierusalem assirii et babilonii, qui dei populum uastauerunt, in terra aquilonis habitabant’. See also the interlinear gloss on Is 41:25, 46:11 and Jr 25:9 (Glossa 3:104v, 108r, 142r), and the marginal gloss on Ez 20:47 (Glossa 3:203r). This is typical of prophetic writings, where directions frequently represent different historical people and places. Thus in Joel 2:20, the north is the Assyrians, where in Jeremiah 46:20 and 24 it is Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans.56Glossa 3:261v, 156v; cf. Jr 13:20, 50:3, 50:41 (Glossa 3:133v, 159v, 161r). Likewise, in Daniel 11, the kings of the north and south are identified as a succession of Greek and Egyptian kings.57Glossa 3:244r–246v. See esp. Dn 11:11 (Glossa 3:245r). Directions can be identified more broadly with the world and its people as a whole.58Kg 7:25, Is 43:5, 45:6, 49:12, 59:19, Mt 8:11 (Glossa 2:55v, 3:105v, 107r, 109v, 116r, 4:936v). Finally, there are a few passages that identify broader natural phenomena, as in Ecclesiastes 1:6, where the movement of the sun to the north and south is explained in terms of the cycle of the seasons.59Glossa 3:21v. But these literal interpretations are broadly unsystematic, Hugh’s proverbial rough foundation that serves to ground the systematic development of allegorical characterisations.60HoSV, Didas. 6.4, ed. Buttimer, 118–19.

Allegorical interpretations of the cardinal points are built first upon their natural and linguistic characteristics.64Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 32–3; Fraesdorff, Norden, 114–15; Lapina, Warfare and the Miraculous, 129–30; Fischer, Europa, 60–1. Though east and west have a consistent terminology, oriens and occidens, north and south are commonly referred to by at least two different terms: septentrio and aquilo for north, and auster and meridies for south. This multiplicity of terms points to the two major lexical bases, celestial and atmospheric, for directional terminology.65Cecil H. Brown, ‘Where Do Cardinal Direction Terms Come From?’, Anthropological Linguistics 25, no. 2 (1983): 121–61; see also p. 000 above. Though exegetes did allegorise the directions both in terms of the solar regions and winds, there is nevertheless a strong equivocation between the two, and they are explicitly equated in the Glossa.66Ez 42:15 (Glossa 3:225v): ‘uentum orientalem: plagam scilicet’. Only a handful of material characteristics of the sort you might find in an encyclopaedia are ascribed to each direction in the Glossa. East is, first of all, associated with rising and the sun. For example, in Zechariah ad orientem is glossed ‘whence the sun of justice will rise’.67Zec 14:4 (Glossa 3:298r): ‘unde orietur sol iusticie’; cf. Eccl 1:5, Ez 46:1, 46:12 (Glossa 3:21v, 297v, 230r); Isi., Etym. 3.42.1–2, 13.1.4. Numerous glosses pick up on just one of the characteristics of rising or the sun: e.g., Gn 11:2 (Glossa 1:20v): ‘cum proficiscerentur de oriente: relicto uero sole’ or Jos 1:15 (Glossa 1:216v): ‘contra solis ortum: a quo oritur omne bonum’. The west is perhaps the least closely associated with its material foundations, resting more on the meanings of the term occidens, but is nevertheless connected with the end of the day or the darkness that comes with the setting sun.68Isi., Etym. 3.42.1–2, 13.1.4. Hence it can be used to mean: ‘where the day ends and the stars fall, that is, on account of the death of all the elect and the general end of the world’.69Ex 26:22 (Glossa 1:85v): ‘Bene in occidentali plaga tabernaculum consummatur, quo dies clauditur, et astra occidunt, propter obitum scilicet cuiusque electi vel generalem mundi terminum’. The north is typically understood in reference to its coldness and numbness, and their oppressive power, often in relation to the north wind.70Isi., Etym. 3.41, 13.11.13. Hence it is common to find interpretations of north on the basis of, for example the frigor infidelitatis, torpor peccati or ventus durus.71E.g., Frigor: Jdt 16:3, Eccl 11:3 (Glossa 2:179r, 3:27r). Torpor: Ez 40:40, 44 (Glossa 3:222v, 223v). Durus: Is 14:31, Jr 1:13, Ez 26:7 (Glossa 3:86v, 123r, 208r). Finally, south is typically allegorised in terms of the heat and light of the sun at mid-day and occasionally with regard to the burning wind.72Isi., Etym. 3.42.3, 13.1.6, 13.1.6. From this we find interpretations such as: ‘where light is full and the sun of justice is set on the highest peak of heaven’ or the ‘warm south wind which melts the water frozen by winter through its warmth’.73Ez 40:2, Sir 43:17 (Glossa 3:220r, 69r): ‘Ad austrum: Ubi lumen plenum est, et sol iustitie in summo celi uertice positus’; ‘Aspirabit notus: Qui et auster uentus calidus qui aquas frigore concretas calore suo dissoluit. Hec est gratia spiritus sancti, que delicti mortalis gelu constricta, calore dispergit’.

The north and west traditionally have negative associations, with the former relating to the sin and the devil and the latter to death and finality.74Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 201. However, the development of these ideas is a bit more involved. On a basic level, there are a number of common terms associated with the north. For example, it is frequently characterised by chill (frigor), sin (peccatum), numbness (torpor), evil (malum) and the devil (hostis/diabolus).75Frigor: Jdt 16:3, Eccl 11:3, cf. 1 Chr 26:14 (Glossa 2:179r, 3:27r, cf. 2:107v). Peccatum/torpor: Ez 40:44, cf. Jb 37:22, Ez 40:19, 40:20, 40:23 (Glossa 3:233v, cf. 2:221v, 3:221v–222r). Malum: Is 41:25, Jr 6:1, 50:9, 51:48, Ez 1:4, 8:3, 32:30, 38:15, 39:2, 40:20 (Glossa 3:104v, 127v, 159v–160r, 162v, 184r, 191v, 214r, 218v, 219r, 221v). Diabolus: Ps 47:3, cf. Jr 3:18, Ez 1:4 (Glossa 2:256r, cf. 3:125v, 184r). These basic allegorical concepts build into various moral and allegorical readings. For example, following Bede, the glossator explains that the north side of the temple relates to the Gentiles since: ‘the second side, which lies to the north, signifies the Gentiles, who up to the time of the incarnation were numb from the darkness and chill of unfaithfulness’.76Ex 26:20 (Glossa 1:85r–v): ‘Latus secundum quod uergit ad aquilonem gentes significat, que usque ad tempus incarnationis tenebris et frigore infidelitatis torpebant’. These same basic characteristics can refer equally to the Jews: ‘these tables are next to the gate which goes to the north because, although they lead the people, Synagoga raving in the persecution of our redeemer rushes on to the numbness of perfidy’ and ‘because under the fear of threats, it constructs the frigid hearts of the Jews’.77Ez 40:40 (Glossa 3:222v–223r): ‘he mense iuxta portam que pergit ad aquilonem sunt, quia cum populo preessent, synagoga in persecutione redemptoris nostri seuiens ad torporem perfidie prorupit’; ‘quia sub timore minarum, frigida iudeorum corda constrinxit’. Morally, the north tends to signify those characteristics that are to be overcome, hence ‘from the memory of their iniquity the sinner accepts the grace of humility and the efficacy of good work’ and ‘through contrition they come to perfection’.78Ez 40:22, 19 (Glossa 3:221v): ‘[peccator] accipit et de memoria iniquitatis sue gratiam humilitatis et efficaciam bone operationis’; ‘[peccatores] per penitentiam ad perfectionem ueniunt’. Cf. Ez 40:24, 40:46, 42:9 (Glossa 3:222r, 223v, 225r). In this oppositional sense it can be associated both with trials, which vivify the faithful, and the positive virtue of hope, ‘because if the sinner despairs of God’s mercy they will altogether perish, whence it is necessary that one who has perished through their iniquity returns to life through hope of mercy’.79Trials: Sg 4:16, Sir 43:18, Jr 6:1 (Glossa 3:32r, 69r, 127v). Hope: Ez 40:24 (Glossa 3:222r): ‘quia peccator si de dei misericordia desperat omnino perit, unde necesse est ut qui per suam iniquitatem extinctus est, per spem misericordie reuiuiscat’. Cf. Nm 2:18, Ez 40:44 (Glossa 1:141r, 3:223r). Despite ample ground provided by Job 37:22 for positive understanding of the north as the place from which gold comes, this passage is rarely drawn upon and the north retains the most consistently negative framing of all four directions.80Glossa 2:221v. This persistence is no doubt a product of both the overwhelmingly negative biblical associations of the north, especially connected with Babylon, as well as the geopolitical realities of the late antique and Carolingian world.81Cf. Fraesdorff, Norden, 129–34.

The west is, by contrast, the least clearly characterised direction. Given the dual meaning of ‘occidens’, the west is typically associated with various terms for ending, finishing and dying: finire/finis, terminare/terminus and occidere.82Finire: Nm 2:18, 1 Chr 26:15 (Glossa 1:141r, 2:107v). Terminare: Ex 26:22, 27:12 (Glossa 1:85v, 87v). Occidere: Ex 27:12, Ps 74:6 (Glossa 1:87v, 2:275r). These ground its most common associations with the end of life or the world.83Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 201; Ex 26:22, 27:12, Nm 2:25, 1 Chr 26:15 (Glossa 1:85v, 87v, 141r, 2:107v). We can see how they are used to construct moral interpretations, such as the end of vice (occasum viciorum or occidunt peccata) and desire (passiones usque ad mortem tolerant).84Vice: Gn 28:14, Ps 102:12 (Glossa 1:36v, 2:293r). Desire: Mt 8:11, cf. Nm 3:23 (Glossa 4:936v, cf. 1:142r). Likewise for allegory, the interpretation of Deuteronomy 33:23 is instructive:

There is some degree of overlap between west and north, particularly at the moral level, since the west is also interpreted morally as an enduring or overcoming of persecution and adversity.87Gn 28:14, Ez 41:11, Ez 47:20 (Glossa 1:36v, 3:224r, 231v). The two can, however, be distinguished linguistically. To take Genesis 28:14 as an example, west (occidens) is glossed: ‘occasum uiciorum’ where north (septentrio) is ‘contractionem uoluptatis et mortificationem desiderii’.88Glossa 1:36v (emphasis added): ‘the passing away of vice’; ‘the contraction of pleasure and mortification of desire’. Here we can see the verbal logic of spiritual exegesis at work, and the way that verbal similarity and even wordplay links the literal and spiritual meanings. Taking this one step further, although the language of mortification can be used in relation to the west, it is also framed here in terms of finality in a way that is not mirrored in language about the north, for example: ‘the ministers of the tabernacle ought to mortify carnal desires with God’s aid and await the last day and the end of labour’.89Nm 3:23, cf. Mt 8:11 (Glossa 1:142r, cf. 4:936v; emphasis added): ‘ministri tabernaculi debent … carnalia desideria dei adiutorio mortificare, diem ultimum et finem laboris expectare’.

The south and east, on the other hand, have traditionally positive associations, representing especially the second and third person of the Trinity, and the Church.90Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 201. The south is the most uniform on this front, being associated uniquely with the Holy Spirit, especially in moral interpretations. Ideas of warmth (calor), light (lumen) and the illumination or activity of the Holy Spirit drive the majority of interpretations of the south.91Calor: Eccl 11:3, Sir 43:17 (Glossa 3:27r, 69r). Lumen: Ez 40:2, 24, 45, Ob 1:9, Hab 3:3, 1 Macc 5:65 (Glossa 3:220r, 222r, 233v, 271r, 283v, 307r). Spiritus Sanctus: 1 Kgs 7:39, Jb 9:9, Job 39:26, Ps 125:4, Sir 43:17, Ez 40:2 (Glossa 2:56v, 198r, 225v, 313v, 3:69r, 220r). Cf. Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 117–28. Hence it often represents the Jews, who bring the light of the law or the knowledge of God prior to Christ, or less frequently the Gentiles, who are brought into the light of faith by the apostles.92Jews: Ex 26:18, 20, 35, 27:11, Nm 2:10, 18, 1 Kg 7:39, 1 Chr 26:15 (Glossa 1:85r–v, 86v, 87v, 141r, 2:56v, 107v). Gentiles: Dt 33:23, Ob 1:19 (Glossa 1:213v, 3:271v). Morally, it pertains to the full illumination of the mind in internal joy and wisdom, and fervour in virtue and faith.93Gn 28:14, 1 Kgs 7:39, 1 Chr 26:15, Jb 9:9 (Glossa 1:36v, 2:56v, 107v, 198r). It is also associated more directly with the virtue of caritas: ‘to the south is caritas, since it burns with the fire of love. For indeed, in the southern gate, the sun is led on high, because through caritas the light of faith is raised up in love of God and neighbour’.94Ez 40:24 (Glossa 3:222r): ‘Ad meridiem charitas: quia igne amoris ardet. In meridiana etenim porta, sol in altum ducitur, quia per charitatem lumen fidei in dei et proximi dilectione subleuatur’. Cf. Gn 24:62, 1 Kgs 7:39, Ez 40:44 (Glossa 1:32r, 2:56v, 3:233v). In its positive moral connotations, south is often contrasted with the north, particularly in terms of a movement from one to the other: ‘Like ice in the sun, when the warm south wind blows, it melts the ice’.95Ps 125:4 (Glossa 3:313v): ‘sicut glacies in sole … quando autem flat calidus uentus auster, liquescit glacies’. Cf. Ez 48:16 (Glossa 3:232r). The south could also represent negative characteristics, as when the Glossa draws upon Bede’s commentary on Song of Songs 4:16 and interprets the south as the worldly allurements (blandimenta) which test the Church.96Glossa 3:32r; Bede, In Cantica canticorum 3.4.16, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983), 270–1. On Bede’s interpretation see Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 123 and p. 000 below. See also, Ex 10:13, Nu 2:18, and more tenuously, Jos 11:2, 15:1 (Glossa 1:64v, 141r, 225r, 236v). This remained a significant interpretation throughout the twelfth century, and indeed we find a parallel interpretation of the south in Hugh’s Ark tract.97Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 123n27; Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa Noe 4.9, ed. Patrice Sicard, CCCM 176 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 111 [hereafter HoSV, De arch.]; cf. HoSV, De scrip. 16, PL 175, 23C. On Hugh’s interpretation of the south, see Wolever, ‘Translatio imperii’, 255–6.

As with the south, the east is also generally associated with another person of the Trinity, the Son. But unlike the south, the east directly represents the person of the Son, as opposed to merely his works. This relationship is based especially on the explicit association in the Vulgate itself: ‘Behold a man, his name is east’ (Zec 6:12) and ‘the east has visited us from on high’ (Lk 1:78).98Chr 4:38, Jb 1:3, Ez 11:1, Ez 40:6, Zec 6:12 and Ez 40:44 (Glossa 2:94v, 188r, 3:193v, 220v, 293r, 233v): ‘ecce uir oriens nomen eius’; ‘uisitauit nos oriens ex alto’. This connection could also be drawn from other passages like ‘I am the door’ (Jn 10:9), ‘the light of the world’ (Jn 8:12) or ‘the way etc.’ (Jn 14:6), or simply Judea’s location in the east.99Jn 10:9: 1 Kgs 6:8, Ez 42:12 (Glossa 2:50v, 3:225r); Jn 8:12: Nm 2:3 (Glossa 1:141r); Jn 14:6: Ez 40:6 (Glossa 3:220v). Judea: Is 41:2, 41:25, 46:11 (Glossa 3:104r, 104v, 108r). Naturally, further interpretations of the east tend to relate to the idea of arising (ortus) or beginning (initium).100Ortus: 1 Chr 12:15, 2 Chr 5:12, Ps 74:7, Ez 40:19, 46:1, Zec 14:4 (Glossa 2:100r, 114r, 275r, 3:221v, 229v, 297v–298r). Initium: Ex 27:13, Nm 2:18, Ez 40:19 (Glossa 1:87v–88r, 141r, 3:221v). Thus a common interpretation is the beginning of the Church or the new creation: ‘the sun of the whole Church sets in the west so that after the darkness has passed it may arise more truly in the east with the life of the present age having ended in the advent of the lord’.101Ex 26:22 (Glossa 1:85v): ‘Occidit omni ecclesie sol in occidente, ut uerius in oriente preteritis tenebris oriatur cum finita in aduentu domini uita praesentis seculi’. Cf. Num 2:18, 1 Chr 26:14 (Glossa 1:141r, 2:107v). This is also linked to the virtue most clearly associated with east, fides: ‘In the east is faith, through which true light is born in the mind’.102Ez 40:24 (Glossa 3:222r): ‘In oriente est fides: per quam lux uera nascitur in mente’. Cf. Gn 28:14, Ex 27:13, Jdt 5:4, Ez 40:44 (Glossa 1:36v, 87v, 2:173v, 3:233v). Though it can also refer generally to the beginning or rise of justice, our illumination and good works.103Justice: Jb 30:12, Ps 74:6, Is 41:2, Ez 41:11, Ez 48:16 (Glossa 2:214r, 275r, 3:224r, 232r). Illumination: Ps 67:34 (Glossa 2:269r). Works: Ex 27:13, Nm 2:18 (Glossa 1:87v, 141r). In line with this image of faith, the interpretation of the east could be inverted in reference to false Christians and heretics, an interpretation that is echoed in Guibert of Nogent’s (d. ca. 1125) castigation of the Eastern Church.104Jd 6:33, Jr 49:28 (Glossa 1:233v, 3:159r); Guibert of Nogent, Dei gesta per Francos 1.2, 2.4, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM 127A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 89–90, 113–16 [hereafter Guibert, Dei gesta].

The act of glossing itself can also serve to blur the boundaries of related exegetical categories, like south and east. For example, in Ezekiel 40:44 the south has become associated with Jesus, when ‘towards the southern way (via)’ is glossed ‘that is, the one way for all, who said I am the way (via)’.105Ez 40:44 (Glossa 3:233v): ‘contra uiam australem’; ‘id est una uia est omnibus, que dicit: ego sum uia’. The interpretation, drawn from Gregory the Great’s homily on Ezekiel, was originally made in reference to the east, since Jesus is between north and south, Jew and Gentile. The glossator has recontextualised the interpretation, however, by connecting it with the term via.106Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem prophetam 2.10.11, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 142 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971), 386–7. The southernness of this road evidently does not preclude such a transposition.

As may be evident by now, allegorical interpretations tended to crystallise within particular narrative contexts. The role of narrative is especially clear in some of the more involved interpretive programs. These interpretations generally fall into one of two categories: either a narrative emerges simply from the typically allegorical associations of each direction being linked together or the narrative context drives the interpretation of the individual directions, sometimes resulting in highly divergent interpretations. The gloss on Ezekiel 48:10 is a good example of the first variety:

The diversity of possibilities can be seen especially in the interpretation of directions as Jews and Gentiles. The Jews alone are represented independently by every direction, although there are notable differences in the way they are characterised by each. In the east, the Jews are the ‘rise of the knowledge of the law’ and ‘of the sun of justice’;108Chr 12:15, cf. 1 Kgs 7:39 (Glossa 2:100r, cf. 2:56v): ‘ortum scientie legis’. Ez 40:19, cf. Rv 21:13 (Glossa 3:221v, cf. 4:1208r): ‘ortus sol iusticie’. in the south, they are the ancient people of God ‘who previously receiving the light of knowledge burn with the love of God’ as well as ‘the common people illuminated by the law and the prophets’;109Ex 26:20, cf. Ex 26:18, 35, Nm 2:10, 18 (Glossa 1:85r, cf. 1:86v, 141r): ‘que dudum lucem scientie legis accipiens, amore dei feruebat’. 1 Chr 26:15, cf. 1 Mc (Glossa 2:107v, cf. 3:311r): ‘plebem lege et prophetis illuminatam’. the west is the ‘casting out of the Jews’;110Zec 14:4, cf. Dt 33:32 (Glossa 3:298r, cf. 1:214v): ‘abiectione iudeorum’. and finally in the north we find the ‘frigid hearts of the Jews’ and ‘Synagoga in persecution of the redeemer’.111Ez 40:40 (Glossa 3:223r): ‘frigida iudeorum corda’. Ez 40:40, cf. Ez 40:2 (Glossa 3:222v, cf. 3:221v): ‘synagoga in persecutione redemptoris’. Through the four directions, the full scope of history is encapsulated in the Jewish people and their theological relationship to Christianity. The Gentiles are not quite so varied as the Jews, but they do receive a variety of interpretations depending on the direction in question. The Gentiles are characteristically associated with the north, which signifies the ‘multitude of Gentiles, numb with the chill of unfaithfulness up to Christ’;112Nm 2:25 (Glossa 1:141r): ‘multitudinem gentium usque ad christum frigore infidelitatis torpentem’. Cf. Ex 26:20, 26:35, Nm 2:18, 1 Chr 26:14, Job 37:22, Ps 47:3, Ez 40:19, Rv 21:13 (Glossa 1:85r, 86v, 141r, 2:107v, 221v, 256r, 3:221v, 4:1208r). conversely, in the south they are ‘inflamed by the light of the gospel’ and the east is ‘the vocation of the Gentiles’.113Dt 33:23, cf. Acts 8:26 (Glossa 1:213v, cf. 4:1157r): ‘luce euangelii feruentes’. Zec 14:4 (Glossa 3:298r): ‘uocatione gentium’. This wide variety of interpretations arises especially in passages that tie a number of cardinal points together under this theme. For example, when Ezekiel 46:9 describes how the people of the land who enter the temple by the north shall leave by the south and vice versa, this is interpreted in terms of Jews and Gentiles:

So while the cardinal directions developed relatively stable overall associations in patristic and Carolingian exegesis, the process of allegorical interpretation did not involve a merely mechanical application of the dominant spiritual association. Rather, each direction had a collection of associated terms, ideas and characteristics which provided tools for the exegete’s work in a given concrete circumstance. As such, despite the stability of these associations, they are never merely determinative of a direction’s meaning in particular circumstance.115Cf. Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 201–3. Even in a conservative collection like the Glossa, we can find examples for every direction that depart from the standard positive-negative dichotomies. Thus, although departures of this sort were not common for the Fathers, at least in so far as it is reflected in the Glossa, this was always already a latent possibility. So even as we find authors like Rodulfus Glaber (d. ca. 1046) or Guibert of Nogent overturning these traditional dichotomies from the eleventh century onwards, they are still working within the same exegetical logic.116Glaber, Hist. 1.5.24, ed. France, 40–3; Guibert, Dei gesta 2.4, CCCM 127A, 115–16.

Hugh of Saint Victor provides an ideal case study on how spatial allegory functions across his writings. This issue has been addressed particularly in terms of the relationship between the maps described literally and allegorically in Hugh’s Descriptio mappae mundi and Libellus de formatione arche respectively.120See Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘“Réalité” et “symbole” dans la géographie de Hugues de Saint-Victor’, in Ugo di San Vittore. Atti del XLVII Convegno storico internazionale (Todi, 10–12 ottobre 2010) (Spolète: Fondazione CISAM, 2011), 359–81, and Marcia Kupfer, ‘Medieval world maps: embedded images, interpretive frames’, Word & Image 10, no. 3 (1994): 262–88. There are broadly two arguments as to how we should think about the relationship between the literal map and its figurative exposition. On the one hand, Marcia Kupfer interprets the movement from one work to the other as a change of perspective. That is to say, they present ‘the same object under two guises and from two points of view [i.e. the aspect of description and the aspect of interpretation]’.121Kupfer, ‘Medieval world maps’, 270. According to this view, the positions of Jerusalem, Babylon and Egypt are immediately significative as a result of their positions on the earth; it is the exegete’s job simply to discover the existing connection. Patrick Gautier Dalché argues to the contrary that this would imply that the Libellus was already formally contained within the Descriptio, but that this cannot stand ‘because of the different status of the spatial realities in the Libellus and in the Descriptio [i.e. in ratione and in actu]’.122Gautier Dalché, ‘“Réalité” et “symbole”’, 18: ‘à cause du statut différent des réalités spatiales dans le Libellus et dans la Descriptio’. On this view, there must be a sense in which the two maps are presenting two different objects, produced through a synthetic relationship between the world (situs locorum) and a particular principle of representation. Thus, Gauter Dalché argues that the Descriptio is conceived of as a wholly autonomous entity, synthesised according to limited human faculties, whereas the Libellus involves a further process of purification according to the divine archetype, stripping it down to only the spiritually significant features.123Gautier Dalché, ‘“Réalité” et “symbole”’, 18–21. While we should be careful not to overstate the difference between these two interpretations, an analysis of this material will show that there are important advantages to the latter position. Furthermore, by setting this material within an exegetical context, we can better appreciate just what it means to consider the situs locorum according to the divine archetype.

Hugh addresses the referential capacity of space through the example of the allegorical status of Babylon and Egypt no less than three times across his writings. The spatial relationship is the same in all three instances. The position of Babylon to the north and Egypt to the south are presented relative to Jerusalem in the two Ark treatises, and to the promised land in De scripturis.124HoSV, De arch. 4.9, CCCM 176, 112: ‘Egyptus a Ierusalem ad austrum est, Babilon uero ad aquilonem’; HoSV, De scrip. 16, PL 175, 23B–C; Hugh of Saint Victor, Libellus de formatione arche 4, ed. Patrice Sicard, CCCM 176A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 155. See also the treatment of these passages in Wolever, ‘Translatio imperii’, 255–6. But is this really the case geographically? Certainly, neither was typically representative of north or south in a general sense. While Ethiopia for example would be the more paradigmatically southern, Egypt is at least relatively in the right location. It is normally represented south or south-east of Jerusalem on medieval maps and Hugh himself does (albeit unusually!) list Egypt as a synonym for the southern region of the world.125HoSV, Desc. 18, ed. Gautier Dalché, 151; see p. 000 below. Babylon, by contrast, is simply not in the right location, relatively or otherwise. Hugh himself situates it to the south within the western region of Asia.126HoSV, Desc. 10, ed. Gautier Dalché, 142. Similarly on mappae mundi, it is typically either situated directly on the east-west axis, as in the Sawley and Hereford maps (fig. 4), or slightly to its south, as in the Ebstorf and Munich maps (fig. 2). This places it east or east-north-east of Jerusalem. There is, therefore, no overriding geographical reason to pick Babylon and Egypt as characteristically north and south of Jerusalem. This is sufficient to exclude the notion that the Descriptio and Libellus represent numerically the same spatial schema, or that geographical relations alone underlie Hugh’s interpretation of Babylon and Egypt.

It is no surprise that space on its own is not inherently meaningful for Hugh, but only potentially. Things (res) have no allegorical meaning on their own and are only made meaningful insofar as God is speaking through them. This is, after all, why scripture ‘excels all other writings’ since in it ‘not only the words but also the things have meaning’.127HoSV, De sacramentis prol.5, PL 176, 185, trans. adapted from Roy J. Deferrari, Hugh of Saint Victor: On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1951), 5: ‘divina Scriptura caeteris omnibus scripturis … praecellat; cum … in hac … non solum voces, sed etiam res significativae sint’. Cf. Gautier Dalché, ‘“Réalité” et “symbole”’, 21. It is the window through which sinful humanity may access the rationally inaccessible contingencies of the divine archetype. For indeed, Hugh does not suggest that we should be able to discern the significance of these places from their relative positions alone. Rather, it is biblical history that imbues them with meaning: ‘we read that the ancient people of the Hebrews first served in Egypt … and then after an interval of many years was led off captive into Babylon’.128HoSV, De arch. 4.9, CCCM 176, 112, trans. Aelred Squire, Hugh of Saint Victor: Selected Spiritual Writings (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 148: ‘Legimus autem, quod ille antiquus Hebreorum populus prius in Egypto in luto et latere seruiuit, ac deinde multis annis intercurrentibus captiuus in Babilonem abductus est’. Cf. HoSV, De scrip. 16, PL 175, 23B–C. It is the Bible, not geography, that serves to contextualise these locations spatially. Babylon is understood as archetypically northern because it is described as such in the major prophets, especially Jeremiah (e.g. 25:9).129The original association was likely a product of Levantine geography, since Mesopotamian armies, e.g. from Babylon, would not cross the Arabian desert, but approach Palestine from the north through Syria. This also explains its prominence among post-exilic prophets. See Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 922–3. Cf. Jr 15:12, Ez 20:47 (Glossa 3:135r, 203r). Hugh’s characterisation of Babylon as meaning ‘confusion’ in De archa is likewise drawn from Jerome’s commentary on Isaiah. This same passage also links the king of Babylon to the subject of Isaiah 14:13: ‘I will sit on the mountain of the covenant, on the sides of the north’, which Hugh echoes in De scripturis.130Jerome, In Esaiam 6.13.1, CCSL 73, 223–4; Is 14:12 (Glossa 3:85v); HoSV, De scrip. 16 (PL 175, 23C): ‘qui ad aquilonem sedem sibi elegerunt’ (who took a seat for themselves to the north) as compared with ‘sedebo in monte testamenti in lateribus aquilonis’ (Is 14:13). On Hugh’s sources for the allusion to Is 14:13, see Wolever, ‘Translatio imperii’, 255n57. While Egypt’s placement to the south of Israel is noted in the Bible, Hugh’s interpretation does not have quite the same degree of scriptural precedent.131E.g., the southernmost tribe, Judah, is described as bordering Egypt to the south (Jos 15:1–4). As with Babylon, Hugh draws on patristic sources for his etymological discussion of Egypt and in this case follows Augustine’s interpretation of Egypt as darkness (tenebrae) or troubles (tribulatio).132Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 77.28, CCSL 39, 1088; HoSV, De arch. 4.9, CCCM 176, 112. This is relatively unusual as an interpretation of the south itself, but Hugh may be drawing broadly on Bede’s interpretation of the south wind in Song of Songs 4:16 as earthly temptations.133Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 117–28, esp. 123n27; Bede, In Cantica canticorum 3.4.16, CCSL 119B, 270–1; cf. Glossa 3:32r. On Bede’s interpretation, see p. 000 below. So while the physical geography, like the literal level of interpretation, conceptually grounds the allegory in some sense, the practice of interpretation has very little to do with the geography itself. Rather it depends more on exegetical context and the content of the interpretation.

We can see the exegetical logic of Song of Songs 4:16 at work in Hugh’s interpretation more generally. The exodus of the Israelites from Egypt through the desert serves as an allegory for the religious life, fleeing from earthly vices and desires, but just as the Israelites were oppressed by the south and then the north, so: ‘the devil does not have any power over us unless we are first drawn by our own earthly desires’.134HoSV, De scrip. 16, PL 175, 23D: ‘Aegyptii opprimunt Israel, deinde Assyrii, non enim in nobis potest quidquam diabolus, nisi prius trahamur a propriis concupiscentiis’. This is, of course, highly reminiscent of the double ordeal of the trials and allurements of the world, from the north and south, that oppress the Church in Bede’s commentary on Song of Songs. We can see how Hugh is constructing an exegetical narrative by drawing together a series of biblical episodes within a particular narrative framework. This is bolstered by an underlying spatial logic, consisting in a series of scriptural and material relationships that serve to connect the directions and their various associations. This same underlying logic and interconnection with biblical exegesis drives other quasi-geographical aspects of Hugh’s Ark. For example, he inscribes ‘Mount Zion’ and ‘the northern parts’ on the upper right and left of the Ark, which represent the Jews and Gentiles respectively.135Hugh of Saint Victor, Libellus de formatione arche 4, CCCM 176A, 139. This is drawn directly from Psalm 47:3 and its standard interpretation: ‘the Jews are signified by mount Zion, the Gentiles by the northern side’.136Glossa 2:256r: ‘per montem syon iudeos significat, per latera aquilonis’. Cf. Augustine, Enarrationes 47.3, CCSL 38, 540. As such, we can see how these spatial tropes form part of a well-known and commonly drawn upon exegetical resource.

Considering the practice of interpreting space and geographical categories as allegorically significant, we must be attentive to the exegetical foundation upon which this practice is based. Though much of the literature has focused on a small selection of works by Hugh of Saint Victor, these works have to be situated within the broader context of biblical exegesis. From that vantage point we can see how drawing an unnecessarily close relationship between the contents of the Descriptio and Libellus can be misleading, as it suggests too direct a move from one to the other. Rather, what we find in the Libellus and related works is a practical method of allegory that is quite close to that being employed in biblical exegesis, one that is driven by the same practices and is drawn from the same pool of exegetical material. It also agrees with the picture that Gautier Dalché presents of the Descriptio being a passive precondition for a meditative ascent of the soul through allegory according to the divine exemplar. By setting this in the context of exegesis, we can begin to see how the Bible functions, even in the less explicitly scriptural examples given by Hugh, as that very archetype according to which the otherwise unremarkable aspects of the situs locorum gain spiritual significance.

One of the most extended examples of this use of the cardinal points is found in Honorius Augustodunensis’s commentary on the Song of Songs.141See generally Matter, Voice of My Beloved, 58–76, and Jeremy Cohen, ‘Synagoga conversa: Honorius Augustodunensis, the Song of Songs and Christianity’s “Eschatological Jew”’, Speculum 79, no. 2 (2004): 309–40. After a standard ‘type C’ prologue, which came into vogue during the first quarter of the twelfth century particularly among the students of Anselm of Laon, Honorius explains that all the books of scripture have their own numerical division.142Matter, Voice of My Beloved, 60–2; Alastair Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), ch. 2. Unlike the Psalms, which are divided in three for the periods ante legem, sub lege and sub gratia, this book is divided into four ‘because the Church, the bride of Christ of whom it sings, is drawn from the four regions of the world into the marriage bed of the bridegroom by the four evangelists’.143Honorius Augustodunensis, Expositio in Cantica canticorum prol., PL 172, 351C, trans. adapted from Matter, Voice of My Beloved, 63: ‘quia Ecclesia sponsa Christi quam canit, de quatuor plagis mundi, per quatuor Evangelia in thalamum sponsi colligitur’. This serves as an extension of the previous formula, with the eastern bride arriving ‘when the multitude of the chosen were elected into the faith of the patriarchs before the law’; the southern ‘when the crowd of peoples was gathered into the faith of the prophets under the law’; the west ‘when the multitude of the Gentile was drawn together by the apostles to the faith of Christ under grace’; and the north ‘when the crowd of infidels converts to faith under the Antichrist’.144Honorius Augustodunensis, Expositio in Cantica canticorum prol., PL 172, 351C–D: ‘quando multitudo electorum ante legem in fidem patriarcharum est electa’; ‘quando turba populorum sub lege in fidem prophetarum est collecta’; ‘quando multitudo gentium sub gratia per apostolos ad fidem Christi est attracta’; ‘quando sub Antichristo turba infidelium ad fidem convertitur’. These periods, and the figures they go on to represent, serve as an eschatological backdrop to the major tension of the work between the two natures of the Church – Synagoga and Gentile – and the apocalypse, driven by the figure of Synagoga conversa, who represents the eschatological unity of Jews and Gentiles.145Cohen, ‘Synagoga conversa’, 313–20; cf. Whalen, Dominion of God, 94–5.

As Ann Matter has already highlighted, this use of the cardinal points to represent salvation history is hardly unique to Honorius. Hildegard likewise uses them to refer to the periods of salvation history and Rupert of Deutz connects them to the ages of man.146Matter (Voice of My Beloved, 64) notes Hildegard, Epistola 49, PL 197, 254A–C, but see also Hildegard, Scivias 3.2.6–7, 3.5.15, 3.6.9, ed. A. Führkötter and A. Carlevaris, CCCM 43–43A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 353–5, 420, 439–40 and Rupert of Deutz, Commentaria in Apocalypsim 12, PL 169, 1197A–B. More significant, however, is the close relationship between Honorius and the Glossa’s interpretation of the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem.147Rv 21:13 (Glossa 4:1208r). This connection is not incidental, since, as Matter emphasises, not only did the Glossa influence Honorius’s commentary, there is also a close interconnection between Song of Songs and the Apocalypse generally in Latin exegesis.148Matter, Voice of My Beloved, 14, 59. As such, to understand the use of the cardinal points as historical categories in twelfth-century exegesis, we will unpack the development of the exegetical connection of Jews and Gentiles with the cardinal points, particularly through the case study of Revelations 21:13, and suggest that this sort of allegorical interpretation of the cardinal points was in fact losing its relevance among the exegetical avant-garde of the twelfth century.

The story is much the same for Augustine and Ambrose. They make use of this trope almost exclusively in their respective commentaries on the Psalms, with a single reference also in Augustine’s commentary on Job.155Augustine, Adnotationes in Iob 37, ed. Joseph Zycha, CSEL 28.2 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1895), 598. Like Jerome, Augustine focuses on the event of Christ’s incarnation. In his commentary on Psalm 47, he portrays the Church and Christ as the cornerstone that joins both peoples, with the incarnation being the active force that grafts the Gentiles onto the Jews (Rm 11:17):

Ambrose also uses this trope to express another essentially Pauline position on Jews and Gentiles, this time drawn from Romans 1:16. Commenting on Ecclesiastes 1:5–6 in his interpretation of Psalm 118, Ambrose explains that:

Unlike the other three major Latin Fathers, Gregory the Great makes more extensive use of the trope. This is especially true of his Homilies on Ezekiel, though there are a number of references in the Moralia as well. As with Augustine and Ambrose, Gregory follows a largely standardised typology of directions. Gentiles are associated with the north and Jews with the east and south.160E.g., Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem 2.6.20, 2.8.13, CCSL 142, 309, 345–6. Unlike Jerome’s interpretation of Ezekiel, Gregory tends to frame north and south around a static relationship, rather than a movement between spaces.161Cf. Jerome, In Hiezechielem 14.46.8, CCSL 75, 696–7. So, for example, the union of the Jews and Gentiles in the Church is represented by directional measurements: ‘because the Almighty Lord Incarnate made perfect within Holy Church some from Judea and others from the Gentiles, He measured a hundred cubits not only to the east but also to the north’.162Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem 2.6.20, CCSL 142, 309, trans. Theodosia Thomkinson, Homilies on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel (Etna: Centre for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2008), 368: ‘Quia itaque incarnatus omnipotens dominus alios perfectos ex iudaea, alios perfectos ex gentilitate intra sanctam ecclesiam fecit, centum cubitos non solum ad orientem mensus est, sed etiam ad aquilonem’. Cf. Ez 40:19 (Glossa 3:221v). Likewise the Gentiles face the south, rather than move there: ‘Thus these same treasure-chambers as well, placed also beside the north, look toward the south. For behold we came from the Gentiles, but inasmuch as we are warmed by the love of the Holy Spirit, we look to the Fathers of Judea’.163Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem 2.10.8, CCSL 142, 385, trans. Tomkinson, 446: ‘Vnde ipsa quoque gazophylacia et in aquilonis latere posita oculos ad uiam australem tendunt. Ecce enim ex gentibus uenimus, sed in hoc quod per sancti spiritus amorem calemus, iudaeae patres aspicimus …’. Cf. Ez 40:44 (Glossa 3:223v). Like the other Fathers, however, this trope is focused centrally on the event of Christ’s incarnation and its theological implications:

Before departing from the patristic era, there is one last point to note about the representation of Synagoga and the Jews in Gregory. Synagoga tends to be used simply as a term for the Jews and thus associated with the south or east.166Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem 2.8.13, 2.10.8, 2.10.11, CCSL 142, 345–6, 385–6; cf. Ambrose of Milan, Expositio Psalmi cxuiii 12.24–5, CSEL 62, 264–5; Ambrose of Milan, Explanatio Psalmorum xii 47.6, ed. Michael Petschenig, CSEL 64 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1919), 350. But Gregory also uses the cardinal points to express the relationship of Ecclesia and Synagoga, which represents an inversion of the previous paradigm, since Ecclesia inhabits the south and Synagoga the north. Gregory makes this point very clearly: ‘[the holy Church] is therefore said to bend towards the south because, if it were said plainly, that other city, sc. the Synagogue, stood to the north amid its faithless citizens and grew hard in the cold of treachery’.167Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem 2.1.6, cf. 2.9.7, CCSL 142, 213, 362, trans. Tomkinson, 266, 422: ‘Haec ergo civitas ad Austrum vergere dicitur, ac si aperte diceretur quod prior illa civitas, scilicet Synagoga, in infidelibus suis ad Aquilonem stetit, quae in frigore perfidiae duravit’. We can read this as a shifting of the geographical position of the Jews and Gentiles, since Synagoga is reserved for the Jews after the advent of Christ. However, as Gregory does not otherwise associate the Jews with the north, we ought to distinguish to some extent the representation of the Jews and of Synagoga. This fits with the broader picture of Gregory’s exegesis, which, as compared with the other Fathers, represents a step towards a more schematic use of the cardinal points. He is more prepared to simply state that directions signify this or that group, and maintains a more consistent typology across a wider number of references.

It is the exegetes of the Carolingian world, however, who establish a properly schematic typology. We can take as an example the two most extensive passages in the Glossa. The first is an abbreviation of Rabanus Maurus’s commentary on Numbers 2:18 about the placement of the tribes around the tabernacle, which is itself substantially drawn from Bede’s De tabernaculo.168Glossa 1:141r; Rabanus Maurus, Enarrationes in Numeros 1.3, PL 108, 603C–604A. Although Rabanus has a reputation for lacking originality and acting more as compiler than exegete, the act of compilation itself often provides new meaning to the content of the interpretation.169de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 1:106. As such, we will move through Rabanus’s commentary and then consider how it has systematised Bede’s exegesis on the tabernacle, as well as the patristic tradition more generally.

Rabanus Maurus is forthright about the role of the cardinal points in Numbers 2. After some preliminary remarks about the content of the section and his role as a commentator, as well as some scattered interpretations, he explains that: ‘the four quarters of the world … according to mystery signify the assembly and arrangement of the holy Church’.170Rabanus Maurus, In Numeros 1.3, PL 108, 603A–B: ‘Quatuor ergo plagae mundi … secundum mysterium convocationem et dispositionem sanctae Ecclesiae significat’. He then moves through each of the directions in turn, providing a general characterisation of the direction, usually drawn near verbatim from Bede’s De tabernaculo with a few added lines of interpretation about the names of the tribes situated on that side of the tabernacle. First, the east, ‘where the entrance into the tabernacle stands open, signifies the beginning of conversion and confession of the catholic faith and the reception of baptism and the early Church’.171Rabanus Maurus, In Numeros 1.3, PL 108, 603B: ‘Per orientem ergo ubi introitus in tabernaculum patebat significat initium conversionis et confessionis fidei catholicae atque baptismatis perceptionem primitivamque Ecclesiam’. Cf. Bede, De tabernaculo 2.13, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL 119A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), 87, trans. Arthur G. Holder, On the Tabernacle (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994), 99–100. The three tribes represent confessors of Christ’s labour. Next, the south ‘designates that ancient people of God who, having long since received the light of knowledge of the law, were accustomed to burn with the love of their Creator’, and the tribes are associated with the holy fathers who, equipped with the arms of justice, resist the midday demon (daemonium meridianum).172Rabanus Maurus, In Numeros 1.3, PL 108, 603C: ‘Plaga vero australis … antiquam illam Dei plebem designat, quae lucem scientiae legalis jam dudum accipiens, amore sui conditoris fervere solebat’. As this is a direct quotation from Bede’s De tabernaculo 2.6, CCSL 119A, 64, the translation is drawn from Holder, 71. The north, conversely, ‘depicts that multitude of the Gentiles which did not cease to languish in the darkness and cold of unbelief right up to the time of the Lord’s incarnation’.173Rabanus Maurus, In Numeros 1.3, PL 108, 603C–D, trans. as in Holder, 71: ‘plaga aquilonis … eam quae tenebris ac frigore infidelitatis usque ad tempus Dominicae incarnationis torpere non destiterat, gentium multitudinem figurat’; cf. Bede, De tabernaculo 2.6, CCSL 119A, 64. I have emended eamque in the PL to eam quae following Bede (ibid.) and Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6261, 11v; cf. Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Cod. Aug. perg. 115, 10r, which agrees with the PL. The tribes are assigned this side because the Jews scorned the Word of the Lord and so the Church expanded with the Gentiles. Finally, west ‘designates the completion of the entire Holy Church universal which is perfected at the end of this world, when also the elect, arising through the persecution of the Antichrist, are approved in their good merits’.174Rabanus Maurus, In Numeros 1.3, PL 108, 603D: ‘Occidentalis ergo plaga … ad impletionem totius sanctae universalis Ecclesiae, quae cum fine hujus mundi perficitur designat, quando et per persecutionem Antichristi crescentes in bonis meritis probantur electi’. The italicised section is drawn from Bede, De tabernaculo 2.6, CCSL 119A, 65, trans. Holder, 72. I have added ‘per’ following Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6261, 11v. Rabanus concludes with a discussion of the Levites, who, lying at the centre of the four directions, are free to perform divine offices without concern since they are fortified from each side, as they still ought to be in modern times.175Rabanus Maurus, In Numeros 1.3, PL 108, 604A: ‘Ita et in moderno tempore …’.

Although Rabanus’s commentary is based on Bede’s De tabernaculo, the thrust of his interpretation has changed. The most immediate difference is how he has reorganised Bede’s discussion of the directions: while Rabanus is self-conscious in presenting a unified interpretation of all four directions together, Bede is not. The majority of the material Rabanus uses is drawn from Bede’s discussion in chapter six of the arrangement of the boards out of which the tabernacle is made. This section, however, only deals with north, south and west, following the biblical account, a point that is not lost of Bede, who suggests that Moses intentionally omitted the east.176Bede, De tabernaculo 2.9, CCSL 119A, 70. The discussion of north and south in this section, as representative of the Jews and Gentiles, is very reminiscent of Gregory’s:

Following the order in Exodus, Bede’s discussion of the east only comes up a few chapters later. After a quick recap of the relationship of north and south, in which the Church is surprisingly associated with north since it is composed of Gentiles, Bede introduces a discussion of the east at the beginning of chapter nine.178Bede, De tabernaculo 2.8–9, CCSL 119A, 73. It is then in chapter ten that the east is described as Christ, the cornerstone of Jew and Gentile.179Bede, De tabernaculo 2.10, CCSL 119A, 76; cf. Augustine, Enarrationes 47.3, CCSL 38, 540. Finally, midway through chapter thirteen, after another brief recap of the previous three directions, Bede resumes the discussion of east in terms of the eastward width of the court. Here we find a summary of all four directions together with explicit reference to the description of north and south in chapter six. The west, however, receives a new interpretation as the heavenly reward for good works to parallel the discussion of east as their beginning.180Bede, De tabernaculo 2.13, CCSL 119A, 86–7. Overall, Bede is largely following the Gregorian paradigm, and while he diverges from Gregory in his association of the Church with the north and his historicisation of the west, he is fundamentally presenting an eschatological union of Jews and Gentiles (north and south) in the Church.

Despite using substantially the same material, the act of compilation adds a different context to the way that Rabanus presents this material. The first obvious difference is the textual relationship between the directions in either commentary. Where, in Bede, the directions are discussed at uneven intervals over a span of eight chapters, in Rabanus they are evenly spaced, and explicitly introduced and discussed in tandem.181Rabanus Maurus, In Numeros 1.3, PL 108, 603A–B. Second, Rabanus moves east to the beginning of the discussion. For Bede, the east represents the initiation to the Christian way of life and hope for the remission of sins, to mirror his second discussion of the west, representing the sacraments of repentance (paenitentia), confession (confessio) and the remission of sins (remissio peccatorum).182Bede, De tabernaculo 2.13, CCSL 119A, 87. Rabanus, however, has mixed Bede’s discussion of the east in chapter thirteen with his brief note in chapter nine about the screen that represents the early church (primitiva Ecclesia).183Bede, De tabernaculo 2.9, CCSL 119A, 74. He has, as a result, rendered the east as the confession of the catholic faith (confessio fidei catholicae), reception of baptism (baptismatis perceptio) and the early church (primitiva Ecclesia). We see a similar shift in emphasis with the west when Rabanus adds a discussion of the Antichrist and the proving of the elect.184Rabanus Maurus, In Numeros 1.3, PL 108, 603B–D. So although Rabanus’s interpretation is directly based on Bede’s, east and west no longer represent the beginning and end of good works, but the beginning and end of the Church as such.

With north and south as well, the Gregorian notion of both Jews and Gentiles becoming one in the primitive Church is lost in Rabanus’s reconstruction. The discussion of the north is instead followed by a note on the rejection of the Jews who scorned Christ, which is cast as a succession from one people to the other.185Rabanus Maurus, In Numeros 1.3, PL 108, 603C–D. As such, Rabanus sets the whole discussion in the context of the historical conditions of the Church, moving progressively from east to west and south to north, rather than focusing on its transhistorical, theological character as in Bede and Gregory. Although it is quite likely that Rabanus did not view the cardinal points as overtly temporal categories, as this is not noted in his discussion of their figurative meanings in De universo, we nevertheless see a shift in how the Church is being conceptualised from a Pauline theology of Jews and Gentiles to a more universal historical approach.186Rabanus Maurus, De universo 9.1, PL 111, 260C–261D.

Before diving into this group of twelfth-century commentaries, we should first sketch out the development of this particular interpretation. The first author to provide a focused interpretation of each of the four sides of the heavenly Jerusalem was Ambrose Autpert. Writing in the tumultuous environment of southern Italy in the late eighth century, he produced a heavily allegorised and apocalyptically driven commentary on Revelation.194Lobrichon, ‘Conserver, réformer, transformer’, 112. His interpretation of Revelation 21:13 dwarfs those of his predecessors, involving an extended account on the meaning of each direction individually.195Previous accounts restricted themselves to numerological readings: Tyconius, for example, influentially interprets the three and four, of gates and directions, as the preaching of the Trinity throughout the world. Jerome associates them with prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance, while the authors of Commemoratorium de Apocalypsi and De enigmatibus associate them with the conversion of different kinds of people, such as young or old. Tyconius, Expositio Apocalypseos 7.37, ed. Roger Gryson, CCSL 107A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 224; Jerome/Victorinus of Pettau, Commentarii in Apocalypsin 21, ed. Johannes Haussleiter, CSEL 49 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1916), 140–53; Caesarius of Arles, Explanatio in Apocalypsin 19, PL 35, 2450; Primasius of Hadrumetum, Commentarius in Apocalypsin 5.21.13, ed. A. W. Adams, CCSL 92 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985), 290; Commemoratorium de Apocalypsi Johannis Apostoli 21.13, ed. Roger Gryson, CCSL 107 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 226; De enigmatibus ex Apocalypsi Johannis 99, ed. Roger Gryson, CCSL 107 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 293; Commemoratorium a Theodulpho auctum 21.13, ed. Roger Gryson, CCSL 107 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 335; Bede, Expositio Apocalypseos 37, ed. Roger Gryson, CCSL 121A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 527. For a catalogue of patristic Apocalypse commentaries, see Francis X. Gumerlock, ‘Patristic Commentaries on Revelation’, Kerux 23, no. 2 (2008): 3–13. He sets out the standard four-part interpretation that ultimately makes it into the Glossa, with east representing the Jews, north the Gentiles, south the height of faith and west looking towards the end of the world. His focus throughout, however, is very specifically on the proclamation and remembrance of true trinitarian faith and this is central to the interpretation of each direction. The east represents specifically the patriarchs and prophets ‘who sometimes openly, sometimes obscurely proclaimed the glory of the Trinity to the Hebrew people’ and the apostles ‘who lead the first-fruits of the Jews to the same confession of the Trinity’.196Ambrose Autpert, Expositio in Apocalypsin 10.21.13, ed. R. Weber, CCCM 27A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), 802: ‘qui gloriam Trinitatis hebraico populo nunc aperte, nunc per enigmata praedicauerunt’; ‘qui ad eandem Trinitatis confessionem primitias Iudaeorum perduxerunt’. In the north as well, Jews and Gentiles are led by the preachers of the holy Church to understanding of the Holy Trinity.197Ambrose Autpert, Expositio in Apocalypsin 10.21.13, CCCM 27A, 803. The south is those who neither rest nor cease proclaiming praise of the Trinity, at which point Ambrose Autpert digresses into a discussion of how the Trinity is both three and one.198Ambrose Autpert, Expositio in Apocalypsin 10.21.13, CCCM 27A, 803–4. Finally, west is the holy preachers ‘who, while by their final preaching return Jewish perfidy and the error of the Gentiles to knowledge of the Trinity, become for them like the three gates by which they may enter into life eternal’.199Ambrose Autpert, Expositio in Apocalypsin 10.21.13, CCCM 27A, 804: ‘qui dum iudaicam etiam perfidiam atque errorem gentilium nouissima praedicatione ad Trinitatis notitiam reducunt, quasi tres portae eis fiunt quibus ad uitam aeternam introeant’. So although this interpretation involves descriptions of certain historical changes, such as the influx of Gentiles and the height of the Church, it is not about these sorts of developments. Instead, it is about universal aspects of the Church throughout history, that is, the proclamation and confession of the true trinitarian faith.

From the time of Ambrose Autpert onward a new degree of attention is paid to the figurative meaning of each direction in this passage. This development must be credited in large part to the Carolingian adaptation of his commentary by Haimo of Auxerre, which cemented the authoritative status of his interpretation both of this passage and of Revelation more generally for subsequent generations.200Lobrichon, ‘Conserver, réformer, transformer’, 117. Like Ambrose, Haimo fundamentally aimed to present a spiritualised understanding of Revelation as a vision of the heavenly Church, but he was nevertheless confronted with, and incorporated, many of the historical aspects of Bede’s commentary.201E. Ann Matter, ‘The Apocalypse in Early Medieval Exegesis’, in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 47–9; Guy Lobrichon, ‘L’ordre de ce temps et les désordres de la fin: Apocalypse et société, du IXe à la fin du XIe siècle’, in La Bible au Moyen Age, 130. We find such a tension between historical and spiritual readings at play in Haimo’s interpretation of Revelation 21:13. Though it is fundamentally about a spiritual vision of the Church in totality, through adaption Haimo adopts a more historical view of the Church. In the first place, Ambrose’s excursus on the nature of God’s unity and Trinity has been significantly abbreviated and moved from the south to the east, similarly quoting sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, but from Isaiah 6:3 rather than Revelation 4:8. In this way, Haimo turns what was a discussion of the content of true faith into a discussion of the first trinitarian faith, as he considers it to have existed among the prophets.202Haimo of Auxerre, Expositio in Apocalypsin 7.21, PL 117, 1199C. For north, Haimo changes the unifying vision of Gentiles being preached to alongside the Jews into a successive account, wherein the ‘Jews believed earlier and the Gentiles after’.203Haimo of Auxerre, Expositio in Apocalypsin 7.21, PL 117, 1199D: ‘prius Judaei crediderunt, deinde gentiles’. The south is mostly a straightforward abbreviation. The discussion of the content of orthodox faith, however, that dominates Ambrose’s account is replaced by an emphasis on the Church itself, with the light of Christ shining over the world, illuminated through trinitarian baptism. Finally, the west has taken on a decidedly more eschatological tone. It is no longer the memory of the Church, which is preserved in expectation of the life to come, but is instead straightforwardly ‘the final age of the world’.204Haimo of Auxerre, Expositio in Apocalypsin 7.21, PL 117, 1200B: ‘Per occasum novissimam mundi aetatem accipiamus’ (Through the west, let us understand the final age of the world). So despite Haimo’s suggestion that ‘nothing historical should be understood in this revelation’, he has adapted Ambrose’s universalised account of trinitarian faith into a periodised history of the Church and indeed the world.205Haimo of Auxerre, Expositio in Apocalypsin prol., cf. 2.4, PL 117, 938C, cf. 1010D–1011A: ‘In hac autem revelatione nihil historicum est accipiendum’.

Haimo’s commentary looms large over the interpretation of Revelation 21:13 down to the twelfth century and its influence on a circle of Anselm of Laon is especially evident. Besides the Glossa and anonymous master of PL 162, Lobrichon identifies three further commentaries in this group: that of Anselm himself, that of a certain Menegaudus and finally one which Lobrichon attributes to Lambert of Saint-Omer, due to its unusual transmission alongside a copy of the Liber Floridus.206Respectively Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 172, 2r–96r; Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 173, 1v–86v; and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 8865, 3v–31r; Lobrichon, ‘Conserver, réformer, transformer’, 119. Two of these contain very similar interpretations to the one found in the Glossa. First, Lambert’s commentary provides a discussion of each of the four directions along quasi-temporal lines, though it goes into more detail than either the Glossa or anonymous master. Lambert gives multiple interpretations of each side of the heavenly Jerusalem. Beginning from the east, he explains that the three gates represent faith in the Holy Trinity, without which none may enter the city that represents the Church, ‘even if the Jews will believe themselves to have been saved, saying that they have known the Lord, although they deny Christ and the Holy Spirit’.207Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 8865, 27v: ‘licet iudei se saluari credent dicentes se nosse dominum cum chrisum et spiritum sanctum negent’. This interpretation is then extended to the other three sides.208Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 8865, 27v: ‘ab aquilone porte tres similiter et ab austro porte tres similiter et ab occasu porte tres similiter’ (So also the three gates on the north and so also the three gates on the south and so also the three gates on the west). Next Lambert gives an interpretation of each set of gates individually. The east is the side of the Jews, where faith in the Trinity first arose before they entered the city. After the Jews, come the Gentiles, who are signified by the north due to the excessive coldness of sins. In the south, the Church is constituted from Jews and Gentiles who are inflamed in love of God ‘in these middle times’.209Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 8865, 27v: ‘in hiis mediis temporibus’. Finally, in the west, ‘after that middle time’ is the time of the Antichrist, when those who faithfully serve the Trinity enter the city as the world is decaying and passing away.210Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 8865, 27v: ‘post istud medium tempus’. Though there is no direct textual relationship, this commentary aligns very closely with the Glossa and Haimo.

We see the same essential pattern in Menegaudus. He begins with a description of the city and its walls, though he discusses angels standing in the gateways and the names of the twelve tribes.211Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 173, 77v. He similarly makes the standard move of associating the tripartite arrangement of the gates on either side with the Trinity being preached through the four corners of the world.212Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 173, 78r. His interpretation of each side of the heavenly Jerusalem is just as standard, with east being ‘the Church of the Jews, in which faith was born’, and north the ‘Gentiles who had been frozen in all evil’.213Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 173, 78r: ‘ab ecclesia iudeorum in quo ortus fidei fuit’; ’a gentilitate quae in omni malo congelata fuerat’. Similarly, the south is seen as the warming of the Church in faith and the west is of course the end times.214Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 173, 78r. Thus, even if each words their interpretation differently, all four of these early twelfth-century commentaries fundamentally appropriate Haimo’s framework of interpreting the four sides of the heavenly Jerusalem as four historical periods of the Church.

Yet at the centre of this circle, this historicised, Carolingian interpretation seems to have lost its relevance. The anomaly of this group is Anselm himself. Unlike the previous four commentaries he provides no individual discussion of each side of the heavenly Jerusalem. Rather he begins as usual with a discussion of the twelve gates representing the Holy Trinity and the four sides representing the four parts of the world and the four gospels that were preached there. He then goes on to discuss the Jews and Gentiles, but does not relate them to any of the directions, returning instead to Gregory’s imagery of two walls coming together in the Church.215Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 172, 88v: ‘quia duos populos iudaycum et gentilem coniunxerunt sicut anguli duos parietes’ (because they joined the two peoples as corners join two walls). It is at this point that Anselm reaches the verse presenting the twelve gates, but instead of describing each individually he reinforces the previous point that it is through faith in the Trinity that all enter the Church, no matter which side they come from.216Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 172, 89r: ‘a quacumque parte ueniant per fidem sancte trinitatis intrabunt in ecclesiam’ (no matter which side they come from, they enter into the church through faith in the holy Trinity). He then turns instead to the walls of the city, which he interprets as the holy defenders of the Church.217Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 172, 89r: ‘murus ciuitatis, id est, santi uiri qui defendunt ecclesiam orationibus suis uel praedicationibus’ (the wall of the city, that is, the holy men who defend the church with their prayers and preaching). The entire discussion of different periods of the Church has thus been erased, entirely subsumed within his offhanded reference to sides.

Anselm is not alone here. For the more ‘innovative’ exegetes of the twelfth century this fundamentally Carolingian interpretation seems to have grown stale. Neither Rupert of Deutz nor Joachim of Fiore focus on such a historicising interpretation of the four sides of the heavenly Jerusalem in their respective Apocalypse commentaries, nor is there a comparable interpretation in any of Gerhoch of Reichersberg’s works.218See generally Classen, ‘Res gestae’, 403–14. On Rupert and Gerhoch, see respectively John Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), and Peter Classen, Gerhoch von Reichersberg: Eine Biographie (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1960). The literature on Joachim by contrast is massive, for a recent overview see Riedl, ed., Companion to Joachim. For a synthetic account of Joachim’s theories, see Whalen, Dominion of God, 100–24, and Brett Whalen, ‘Joachim the Theorist of History and Society’, in Riedl, ed., Companion to Joachim, 88–108, and for a more developmental account, see Rubenstein, Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream, 181–207. Rupert simply associates them with the ages of man, since people of all ages enter the Church through the same trinitarian faith, and while the ages of man are at least potentially historicising, Rupert does not take this step.219Rupert of Deutz, In Apocalypsim 12, PL 169, 1197A–B; cf. Rupert of Deutz, De victoria verbi Dei 9.15, ed. Rhaban Haacke, MGH QQ 5 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus, 1970), 292, and Bruno of Segni, Expositio in Apocalypsim 7.21, PL 165, 721D–722C. This by no means reflects a hesitancy on Rupert’s part towards interpreting the cardinal points historically, but it no longer accompanies the heavenly Jerusalem and it no longer follows this Carolingian model. Rather, blending prophetic material from Revelation and Daniel, the interpretation of the four winds of heaven forms a leitmotiv across Rupert’s commentaries on the minor prophets. His most extensive meditation on the theme is found in the commentary on Zechariah. Beginning by linking the four-horned beast (Zec 1:18) to Daniel’s statue and beasts, the discussion weaves its way down to the four chariots in chapter six. These, we are told, represent the four ‘orders’ of the Church, which stand before the Lord as the four winds of heaven (Zec 6:5).220Rupert of Deutz, In Zachariam commentarii 1.1, 2.6, PL 168, 708D–709D, 739B–741D; cf. Rupert of Deutz, In Osee commentarii 6.13, PL 168, 193A–B. The same chariots are interpreted as the four world empires in Rupert of Deutz, De sancta trinitate et operibus eius 32, In Danielem 24, ed. Rhaban Haacke, CCCM 21–4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971–2), 1773–4. Finally, they are opposed by the four angels of Revelation holding back the winds (Rv 7:1), who represent the four evil princes of the angels (Babylon, Persia, Macedonia and Rome) holding back the Church and its universality.221Rupert of Deutz, In Zachariam 2.6, PL 168, 742A. This is in one sense a much more directly historical reading, but it also deemphasises the cardinal points, which are not mentioned individually, and returns fundamentally to a numerological interpretation of the number four.222Both lines of interpretation here were previously applied to Rv 21:13 by Bruno of Segni, Expositio in Apocalypsim 7.21, PL 165, 721D–722C (Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz, 275).

Joachim, on the other hand, follows in the footsteps of Anselm in his Apocalypse commentary, sidestepping the directions to focus instead on the ‘wall of the city’ as representing the defenders of the Church.223Joachim of Fiore, Expositio Apocalypsis 8.4.4, ed. Alexander Patschovsky and Kurt-Victor Selge, Expositio super Apocalypsim et opuscula adiacentia, vol. 2, MGH QQ 35 (Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz, 2024), 1116: ‘Murus ciuitatis’. When he does turn his attention to the four sides in his exposition on the twelve gates as twelve pearls (Rv 21:21), he eschews the Carolingian model and instead interprets the sides as gifts of the spirit (1 Cor 12:8–9). East is the privilege of faith, north the virtue of forbearance, west the contempt for the world and south is those who exult in the joy of the Lord.224Joachim of Fiore, Expositio Apocalypsis 8.4.18–19, MGH QQ 35, 1132–3. Of note here is Joachim’s flexible engagement with the biblical text itself. For reasons that are not entirely clear, he has changed the order of west and south as compared with the text of Revelation and uses meridies for south instead of the Vulgate’s auster. Yet Joachim goes one step further in his departure from the text and adds a fifth region to the city, explaining that the reader should consult his fuller treatment of this issue in the Psalterium decem cordarum.225Joachim of Fiore, Expositio Apocalypsis 8.4.18, MGH QQ 35, 1132–3. This interpretation is also noted briefly in Joachim of Fiore’s Enchiridion super Apocalypsim 16.3 and Liber introductorius in Expositionem Apocalypsis 14.8, ed. Alexander Patschovsky and Kurt-Victor Selge, Expositio super Apocalypsim et opuscula adiacentia, vol. 1, MGH QQ 31 (Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz, 2020), 412, 623–4. This is because, as with Rupert, Joachim’s ultimate interest is numerological and by adding a fifth part of the city, he is able to produce a factor of 150, in line with the broader aims of the Psalterium decem cordarum.226Joachim of Fiore, Psalterium decem cordarum 2.5–6, cf. 2.prol., ed. Kurt-Victor Selge, MGH QQ 20 (Hannover: Hahn, 2009), 139–42, 115–22; Selge, ‘Einleitung’, in MGH QQ 20, CLXX–CLXXII.

The Psalterium decem cordarum offers another interpretation of the four sides, in the same altered order, that approaches a historical progression, interlinked at least loosely with his theory of three status relating to the three persons of the Trinity.227See Whalen, Dominion of God, 106–8; Whalen, ‘Joachim the Theorist’, 102. The east represents God the Father as father, and pertains to the prelates and elders of the Church as the first people of God ‘because in the east there is in a certain way the beginning of the earth and from there the lights of heaven are expected’.228Joachim of Fiore, Psalterium decem cordarum 2.7, MGH QQ 20, 145–6: ‘quia in oriente est quodammodo principium orbis et inde expectantur luminaria celi’. The north represents God almighty as lord and war leader, and pertains to the deacons and martyrs. This direction seems to have caused some problems for Joachim as it was later revised. Originally Joachim justified the identification by comparing a verse about Christ (Ps 109:2) with one about the martyrs (Ws 3:7–8), while the later redaction associates it more generally with the fear that through violence faith, truth and love may be destroyed and God’s Trinity denied.229Joachim of Fiore, Psalterium decem cordarum 2.7, MGH QQ 20, 146–7. The west pertains to the doctors who need the greatest humility, who Joachim connects to God’s name as teacher for ‘the Son of God was made small that he could be a teacher of the small’.230Joachim of Fiore, Psalterium decem cordarum 2.7, MGH QQ 20, 147–8: ‘Parvulus ergo factus est Dei Filius, ut esset magister parvulorum’. The south, where God is named friend, relates ‘to the contemplators who are warmed by grace of the Holy Spirit to the love of God’.231Joachim of Fiore, Psalterium decem cordarum 2.7, MGH QQ 20, 148–9: ‘a contemplatores, qui calescunt gratia Spiritus sancti ad amandum Deum’. Finally, the body of the city is where God is named judge and it pertains to the Church as the seat ‘in which God almighty sits to administer justice’.232Joachim of Fiore, Psalterium decem cordarum 2.7, MGH QQ 20, 149: ‘in qua sedet Deus omnipotens ad exercenda iudicia’. This sort of historicising interpretation nevertheless remains something of an afterthought, as Joachim quickly returns to his broader numerological concerns and teases out various other factors of 150 from this material.233There is one more incidental discussion of the four sides at Joachim of Fiore, Psalterium decem cordarum 2.11, MGH QQ 20, 180–2. Thus, as we see with both Rupert and Joachim, Haimo’s Carolingian interpretation may have seemed somewhat antiquated by the twelfth century, or at least the new exegetical avant-garde were more interested in pursuing different avenues of allegorical exegesis. Nor should it escape our notice that Rupert and especially Joachim have returned centrally to a Tychonian model of numerology to pursue a less strictly immanent, Augustinian apocalypse.

Returning then to Honorius’s Song of Songs commentary, we are now in a position to see how it fits into the broader exegetical environment of the early twelfth century. Rather than a narrow model of ‘German Symbolism’, Honorius was drawing upon a set of widespread and well-known exegetical presentations of the four cardinal points as representing four ages of the salvation history. This was also linked into a broader usage, particularly of north and south, to represent the theological relationship of Jews and Gentiles both as it unfolds across salvation history and as they stand within the heavenly Jerusalem. This tradition appears to have calcified into an authoritative reading by the turn of the twelfth century, as we can see by its inclusion in the Glossa and its broader circulation among minor apocalypse commentaries.234See also Richard of Saint Victor, In Apocalypsim 7.4, PL 196, 866C–D. In addition, the more ambitious exegetes of the twelfth century were increasingly ready to play not only with their interpretation but even the biblical text itself. Just as we saw with Joachim of Fiore, Rupert of Deutz has no problem reordering the directions as found in the Bible when he presents them as the ages of man, so as to allow him to conjoin the north with the age of decrepitude.235Rupert of Deutz, In Apocalypsim 12.21, PL 169, 1197A. Likewise with Honorius, the order of the directions is not east, west, south, north, as in his preceding quotation from Matthew 8:11, but east, south, west, north. Other authors took this flexibility even further, as when Hildegard interprets the directions in one of her visions through two successively different orders.236Hildegard, Scivias 3.2.6–7, CCCM 43A, 353–5.

This increasingly flexible attitude towards the biblical text not only casts a new light on Hugh’s castigation of the ‘teachers of allegory’, but highlights an important opposition between allegorical and historical interpretation. Although what I have been describing as a historicised account of salvation history that emerged among Carolingian exegetes of the ninth century did not obviously strike its contemporaries as an overtly historical or historicising interpretation. To the contrary, the readings of Revelation 21:13 that have been described here as ‘historicised’, both in the early Middle Ages and the twelfth century, are found within Apocalypse commentaries that are generally considered less historicising overall. Thus, it was the tradition following Ambrose Autpert, not Bede, that developed this interpretation, and in the twelfth century it is the mainstream, spiritualising commentaries that interpret the passage in this light, as opposed to the historicising commentaries of people like Rupert of Deutz or Joachim of Fiore.237Rupert of Deutz, In Apocalypsim 12.21, PL 169, 1196C–1197B; Joachim of Fiore, Expositio Apocalypsis 8.4.4, MGH QQ 35, 1116. Obviously we should not discount the apocalyptic framework for this trope in both Hildegard and Honorius. At the same time, the use of this trope in the twelfth century seems to have been considered old-fashioned and representative of a conservative, Augustinian account of salvation history, which conceived of it as a spiritualised and transcendent reality, removed from the progressive development of history in the sixth age. As such, the intention may have been to present the totality of salvation history as a whole, rather than its progressive development per se.

This material from the late eleventh and early twelfth century provides a window into a very interesting period in commentary on Revelation 21:13. Although the circle of Anselm hardly had the last word in this era, it stands out as a microcosm of contemporary developments in the interpretation of Revelation more generally and of this passage in particular. Two specific trends appear to be emerging around the axis of the twelfth century. First, we see an increasing proliferation of interpretations when compared with the early Middle Ages. Though certain key points remain, such as Tyconius’s numerological interpretation of three and four, the symbolic possibilities for the four cardinal points proliferate. Second, there is a general trend towards further historicising Haimo’s interpretation, although with the proviso that the more ‘historicised’ reading of Revelation 21:13 generally corresponds with the less historicising interpretations of the Apocalypse overall. So, while the Glossa is the version that would be cited by future generations, as can be seen, for example, in the Postilla of Hugh of Saint-Cher, we should not forget the diversity of interpretation out of which it emerged in the early twelfth century.238Hugh of St. Cher, Postilla, ed. N. Pezzana, 7 vols (Venice, 1703), 7:425r. On the Postilla, see David Burr, ‘Mendicant Readings of the Apocalypse’, in Emmerson and McGinn, eds, Apocalypse, 90, and Robert E. Lerner, ‘Poverty, Preaching, and Escatology in the Revelation Commentaries of “Hugh of St Cher”’, in The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley, ed. Katherine J. Walsh and Diana S. Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 157–89.