Memory Training

LENT IS here again! As I was looking through St Anthony’s Commentaries on the Gospels for the season, my eye fell on a short passage on the fourth Sunday (Sermons, I, 183-184). The Gospel told how our Lord fed five thousand people with five loaves, and the Saint comments (regarding the loaves), “They are also the five brothers of Judah, of whom Jacob says in Genesis: Judah, thee shall thy brothers praise.”

What a strange comment! Can we make anything of it (and of our Saint’s explanation) today? Let me tell you something of the background. What seems strange to us was quite commonplace to biblical scholars in Anthony’s days. Remember that our Saint began his religious life not as a friar, but as an Augustinian Canon under his baptismal name of Fernando. For the first couple of years he resided at the new foundation of St Vincent, close to Lisbon, but then he transferred to the Abbey of Holy Cross at Coimbra. This was the ‘Westminster Abbey’ of Portugal, closely associated with the royal court. The community included priests who had been trained in theology at Paris, which in the 12th century was the foremost centre of biblical studies. The Augustinian Abbey of St Victor in Paris was paramount in this field, and it was here that Anthony’s masters would have learned what they in turn passed on to him.

 

The Twelve Patriarchs

 

One of the leading writers on spiritual matters was Richard of St Victor, who died in 1173. Little is known of his early life, but he seems to have been born in Scotland, and to have come to Paris in the 1150s. According to a modern author, Richard “carried on and developed the tradition of a Biblically based, liturgically sensitive and theologically sophisticated spirituality” already established at the Abbey. One of his principal works is entitled The Twelve Patriarchs, and it is an exposition of the spiritual life in which each stage is related to the twelve sons and one daughter of Jacob. Anthony quotes Richard in a number of places, and so it is most probable that he took the general idea of interpreting spirituality in this way from Richard.

Anthony’s exposition is much shorter than Richard’s, of course, and only relates to five brothers. Genesis tells how the Patriarch Jacob married two sisters, Leah and Rachel, each of whom had a maidservant, Zilpah and Bilhah. It was by these four women that Jacob had his twelve sons and one daughter, of whom six boys and the girl were born to Leah. Although (as we know) Jacob’s favourites were the sons of Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin, the most important for future history was Judah, son of Leah, from whom our Lord was descended. The words of Jacob that Anthony quotes, Judah, thee shall thy brothers praise, are a Messianic prophesy: from his line David and eventually Jesus would be born.

 

Stages of spiritual life

 

Hebrew names have meanings, which are often made quite explicit in the Biblical text. For instance, Leah called her first child Reuben (which means ‘See, a son’), for she said, “Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction”, while she called her second child Simeon, and said, “Because the Lord has heard”. Then came Levi (joined), Judah himself (praise) and after an interval Issachar (hire) and Zebulon (honour). Anthony’s knowledge of Hebrew was second-hand, but his interpretations of the names are close to these: ‘seeing’, ‘hearing’, ‘added to’, ‘reward’ and ‘dwelling of fortitude’. Only the last one seems questionable.

Like Richard of St Victor, Anthony wants to use these names as pegs on which to hang his teaching on the stages of the Christian life. This was a standard method of training the memory, and still useful today. “Do you want to remember the stages of the spiritual life? Think of the sons of Jacob!” So first we must learn how to see: to survey our life and recognise our needs and our weaknesses. Anthony says we should look at the past and the future, at prosperity and adversity, at heavenly joys and earthly temptations, and finally at ‘things within’. In this way we will stimulate contrition, the first stage of our spiritual progress.

 

Fruits of penance

 

Then comes hearing – by which Anthony means God hearing us. We must confess our sins, for how can God hear us if we do not speak? I think what he means is that it is one thing to look at our life and circumstances, it is another to admit and confess the implications for our action. Then we must ‘join’ or ‘add’ practical steps to put right what is wrong, to make amends for injuries we have caused, all that comes under the broad heading of ‘satisfaction’. Bring forth fruits worthy of penance, says the Baptist. Contrition, confession and satisfaction are the traditional parts of penance, especially in connection with the sacrament of Reconciliation.

In treating these three sons, Richard’s interpretation differs somewhat from Anthony’s, so that he is probably not the direct source. Reuben still means ‘seeing’, but for Richard sight leads to the fear of the Lord, while Simeon represents the contrition that follows from seeing. Levi is then the hope of forgiveness that is added to our sorrow. The outline of the spiritual path is the same, but the way the names are used as reminders can differ.

 

The moral sense

 

Following the Scriptural order, Richard deals with the children of the two maidservants next, whereas Anthony is only concerned with the sons of Leah. Issachar is ‘the reward of eternal blessedness’, while Zabulon seems to represent the foretaste of that delight which is found in prayer and contemplation even now.

It is important for us to understand that neither Richard nor Anthony are talking about the literal or historical sense of Scripture as we would understand it, the sense consciously intended by the human author. For them, the details of the lives of remote historical figures such as the Patriarchs was of marginal interest, setting aside the central fact of Judah being the ancestor of Christ. In order to gain practical help for daily living, they look for the ‘moral sense’, which may be directly taught in the text, or shown in either good or reprehensible behaviour, but which may also involve (as it does here) taking the Biblical characters as allegories of moral and spiritual virtues.

The spiritual senses of Scripture must nevertheless be rooted in the literal sense: in the present case, based on the interpretation of the Hebrew names given in the text itself. Beyond that, Richard and Anthony exercised some personal discretion in how they developed their theme, but always within the tradition they had received about the Christian life. We too can still use their writings as jumping-off points for our own meditations.