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The “Suffering Servant” and Milton's Heroic Norm

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

John M. Steadman
John M. Steadman
Affiliation:
Atlanta, Georgia
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Extract

In the Christ of Paradise Regain'd recent scholarship has recognized Milton's answer to the classic problem of the Renaissance epic poet — the choice of an exemplary hero. In both of his epics the perfect “pattern of a Christian hero” is exhibited not in a secular “king or knight,” but in the Son of God himself — the “Most perfect Heroe, try'd in heaviest plight Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight.” In the protagonist of Paradise Regain'd Hughes saw “the culmination of the faith of the Reformers in an exemplar [sic] Redeemer, the Word of Saint John's Gospel, as it fused with the cravings of the critics and poets of the later Renaissance for a purely exemplary hero in epic poetry.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , January 1961 , pp. 29 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1961

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References

1 Hughes, Merritt Y., “The Christ of Paradise Regained and the Renaissance Heroic Tradition,” SP, XXXV (1938), 254–277Google Scholar; idem, “Milton and the Sense of Glory,” PQ, XXVIII (1949), 107–124Google Scholar; Tillyard, E. M. W., “The Christ of Paradise Regained and the Renaissance Heroic Tradition,” SP, XXXVI (1939), 247–252Google Scholar; Miller, Milton, “Paradise Lost: The Double Standard,” University of Toronto Quarterly, XX (1951), 183–199CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kermode, Frank, “Milton's Hero,” RES, ns, IV (1953), 317–330Google Scholar; Woodhouse, A. S. P., “Theme and Pattern in Paradise Regained,” University of Toronto Quarterly, XXV (1956), 167–182CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Stein, Arnold, Heroic Knowledge: An Interpretation of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes (Minneapolis, 1957)Google Scholar; Stein's “underlying assumption” (p. 17) is “that Paradise Regained is a dramatic definition of ‘heroic knowledge,’ not of heroic rejection; and that the contest is a preparation for acting transcendence in the world, by uniting intuitive knowledge with proved intellectual and moral discipline”; cf. ibid., 205, “The key for Milton is knowledge, the self-knowledge of thought tested by deed, heroic knowledge maintained against the pressing claims of immediate knowledge and action.”

2 Hughes, SP, 277.

3 Kermode, 330.

4 Woodhouse, 167.

5 See The Reason of Church Government, in The Prose Works of John Milton, II (Bohn Library, London, 1883), 478.Google Scholar

6 Bywater, Ingram (tr.), Aristotle on the Art of Poetry (Oxford, 1951), 43.Google Scholar

7 See Milton's Christian Doctrine, tr. Charles R. Sumner, in Prose Works, IV, 304, “Having treated of the mediatorial office, and its threefold functions, we are now to consider the manner in which it is discharged. This includes the state of humiliation to which our Redeemer submitted, as well as his state of exaltation.” For the relationship of the theology of the De Doctrina to that of Paradise Lost, see Kelley, Maurice, This Great Argument (Princeton, 1941)Google Scholar.

8 In representing Christ himself as the heroic exemplar in both of his epics, Milton was following not only the theological doctrine of “the conformation of the faithful to the image of Christ” (Prose Works, IV, 309), but also the Renaissance critical principle of conformity to the moral example of the epic hero. Thus Tasso maintains, in his Discorsi del Poema Eroico, that heroic poems and discourses on their composition should be especially dear to those who, “riconoscendo le virtú del padre e de gli avi, se non piú belle, almeno piú ornate con varii e diversi lumi de la poesia, cercano di conformar l'animo loro a quello esempio; e l'intelletto loro medesimo è il pittore che va dipingendo ne l'anima a quella similitudine le forme de la fortezza, de la temperanza, de la prudenza, de la giustizia, de la fede, e de la pietá, e de la religione, e d'ogni altra virtu, la quale 0 sia acquistata per lunga esercitazione, o infusa per grazia divina.” Torquato Tasso, Prose, ed. Francesco Flora (Milan and Rome, 1935), 319.

9 Milton, IV, 316. Cf. Polanus, Amandus, The Substance of Christian Religion, tr. Wilcocks, Thomas (London, 1608), 121Google Scholar, “The state of the humiliation of Christ, was that state of his in which hee did abase himselfe, that so by his obedience, hee might satisfie for our disobedience.” According to John Wolleb's Abridgment of Christian Divinitie, tr. Ross, Alexander (London, 1660), 135Google Scholar, “The state of Humiliation is, in which he took the forme of a Servant being in the forme of God, and gave obedience to his Father for us …: And in this State he so performed his Prophetical, Sacerdotal, and Regal office, that in a manner he stript himselfe of the forme and glory of the Divinity.” In The Reason of Church Government, Milton declared (II, 483) that “the form of a servant was a mean, laborious, and vulgar life, aptest to teach; which form Christ thought fittest, that he might bring about his will according to his own principles, choosing the meaner things of this world, that he might put under the high.”

10 Milton, IV, 317, “So far, therefore, as regards the satisfaction of Christ, and our conformity to his humiliation, the restoration of man is of merit; in which sense those texts are to be understood which convey a notion of recompense and reward.”

11 Ibid., 316–317.

12 Ibid., 304–308, 316; cf. 118, 145.

13 Ibid., 304.

14 Ibid., 309–310.

15 Tasso, 368, “ma l'illustre de l'eroico è fondato … sopra il magnanimo proponimento di morire.…”

16 Milton, IV, 307–308.

17 Pope, Elizabeth Marie, Paradise Regained: The Tradition and the Poem (Baltimore, 1947), 13–14Google Scholar.

18 Polanus, 150. Cf. Paradise Regain'd, III, lines 21–23, “These God-like Vertues wherefore dost thou hide ? Affecting private life, or more obscure In savage Wilderness …?”

19 Wolleb, 135–136. For Milton's indebtedness to Wolleb, see Kelley, Maurice, “Milton's Debt to Wolleb's Compendium Theologiae Christianae,” PMLA, L (1935), 156–165CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scott-Craig, T. S. K., “Milton's Use of Wolleb and Ames,” MLN, LV (1940), 403–407Google Scholar.

20 Bywater, 47. Cf. Hughes, (ed.), Paradise Regained (New York, 1937), 531 n.Google Scholar; Langdon, Ida, Milton's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (New Haven, 1924)Google Scholar.

21 See Kermode, op. cit.

22 Nevertheless despite his knowledge of these prophecies Satan does not really understand the means whereby Christ will establish his kingdom; cf. Paradise Regain'd, IV, lines 152–153, “Means there shall be to this, but what the means, Is not for thee to know, nor me to tell.”

23 Instead of achieving his kingdom “in short time with ease” (Paradise Regain'd, IV, line 378), as Satan proposes, Christ must attain it only by “many a hard assay” and in the “fulness of time.” Satan not only attempts to persuade Jesus to employ means contrary to those set forth in the Messianic prophecies, but also tries to induce him to act prematurely. Christ manifests his obedience through his willingness to await the “due time” which “The Father in his purpose hath decreed” (Paradise Regain'd, III, lines 182–186), whereas Satan argues that the present moment is “full age, fulness of time, thy season” (Paradise Regain'd, IV, line 380).

24 Polanus, 120–121.

25 Wolleb, 156.

26 Satan's offer of “the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them” obviously constitutes a direct challenge to the whole concept of Christ's humiliation. Cf. Paradise Lost, III, lines 238–240 (“I for his sake will leave Thy bosom, and this glorie next to thee Freely put off, and for him lastly die”) and 311–314 (“because in thee Love hath abounded more then Glory abounds, Therefore thy Humiliation shall exalt With thee thy Manhood also to this Throne”). Italics mine.

27 Satan attempts to wrest the prophecies to his own ends, either by representing the values he offers as means of fulfilling the Old Testament predictions concerning the Messiah, or else by maintaining that the prophecies themselves are not absolute but conditional — that their fulfillment is contingent upon Jesus' adopting the means and occasions he offers. Cf. Paradise Regain'd, III, lines 177–180, 351–356; IV, 106–108.

28 The Trinity Manuscript does, however, contain a brief outline of a drama on “Christus Patiens.” See Hanford, James Holly, A Milton Handbook, Fourth Edition (New York, 1947), 181 n.Google Scholar

29 For a bibliography of studies on the “suffering servant” of Isaiah 53, see North, Christopher R., The Suffering Servant in Isaiah: An Historical and Critical Study, Second Edition (London, 1956), 240–253Google Scholar. “Until the close of the eighteenth century,” North observes (p. 1), “Christian writers — with almost the sole exception of Grotius, who thought of Jeremiah — were unanimous that Isa. liii was Messianic prophecy”; cf. ibid., 23–27.