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Wisdom and Fortitude in Samson Agonistes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

A. B. Chambers
A. B. Chambers*
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis
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Extract

That vast distance from the muscle-bound Samson in the Book of Judges to the tragic figure of Samson Agonistes is to be traversed, as we now know, by means of Biblical commentary and its metamorphosis of a solar myth into a parable of faith. Yet one of the important stepping-stones along the way from Bible to Milton seems not to exist. Samson is emphatic in its references to wisdom, but the Samson of Christian tradition, even when a typological symbol for Christ, was but rarely noted for his strength of mind. Milton's unparalleled concern for wisdom is nevertheless no startling innovation, I think, but rather the inevitable consequence of a second tradition, equally valid and quite as long, which is within the poem. For this tradition the brief formula is “wisdom and fortitude”—sapienlia etfortiludo—a phrase descriptive of the heroic ideal and conventional to relevant background materials of at least three kinds. The first, surveyed some years ago by Ernst Curtius, begins with the heroic poems of Homer and Virgil and continues into the Renaissance. The second, considered more recently by R. E. Kaske, includes the Germanic and Old English literature of heroism, the important example being Beowulf. And the third, upon which I think Milton primarily relied and with which I shall be concerned, is a philosophy of courage, classical in origin but Christian in development. These backgrounds differ among themselves in significant ways. While the loftiest heroes—Odysseus, Aeneas—seem always to have been simultaneously wise and brave, heroic literature sometimes allows these virtues to be separable from one another. The classic illustration is summarized by Macrobius: “Nestor … helped the army quite as much with his prudence as all the youth with their might.” So, in the Song of Roland (l. 1093), “Rollant est proz e Oliver est sages.” Philosophic discussion, however, insists that these virtues cannot be divorced, that an unwise courage cannot exist. “If,” wrote Henry More, an unwise man should “light upon the doing of some brave Action, 'tis not Virtue, but Fortune, that must be applauded for such happy chance.” The interesting result of such a position is that fortitude undergoes a radical change in meaning; it refers no longer to the brute strength of an Ajax nor to the prowess in arms of Achilles but to what Milton calls “heroic magnitude of mind.” The extent of this profound alteration is first perceived in Plato and Aristotle, but for the comprehensive and systematic account, one turns to the Summa theologica of Aquinas.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 78 , Issue 4-Part1 , September 1963 , pp. 315 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1963

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References

1 Michael Krouse, Milton's Samson and the Christian Tradition (Princeton, 1949).

2 Krouse, pp. 33, 51, 54, 70 and 73, notes the rare examples; his summary (p. 100) is that he “found no document in the exegetical literature in which Samson is treated as having been endowed with remarkable intellectual capacity.” Krouse, however, believes that “Milton's handling of Samson in this respect is wholly true to the tradition” (ibid.), whereas I shall argue that it is not.

3 “Zur Literarästhetik des Mittelalters, II,” ZfrPh, lviii (1938), 200–215; and in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. Trask (New York, 1953), pp. 167–179. A few Renaissance examples of the sapienlia et fortitudo formula not noticed by Curtius are: Virgilio Malvezzi, Considerations upon the Lives of Alcibiades and Coriolanus, tr. Gentilis (London, 1650), p. 193 (the “valour and wisdom” of the best princes); Eliot, The Governor (London, 1907), p. 285; Bacon, De sapienlia veterum, xxvi (Prometheus as a myth of wise fortitude); Chapman, TheOdysseys of Homer (London, 1897), p. vii (the Iliad concerns fortitude, and the Odyssey concerns wisdom); Cowley, Davideis, iv (on Jonathan and David); Wither, A Collection of Emblems (London, 1635), p. 103.

4 “Sapienlia et Fortitudo as the Controlling Theme of Beowulf,” SP, lv (1958), 423–456. Kaske includes in his discussion relevant parts of the patristic idea of wisdom.

5 Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, i.iii.15.

6 Enchiridion Ethicum, tr. Southwell, with introduction by Lamprecht (New York, 1930), p. 109.

7 Samson, 1279. Quotations are from Paradise Regained, The Minor Poems and Samson Agonistes, ed. Hughes (New York, 1937).

8 I summarize from Aquinas' treatises on fortitude (Summa, ii–ii, Qq. 123–140), on prudence (ii–ii, Qq. 47–61) and on the gift of wisdom (ii–ii, Q. 45). More elaborate paraphrases of these treatises are given by Roy R. Bode, A Philosophy of Courage (Catholic University of America, 1950); and by Josef Pieper, Prudence, tr. Winston (New York, 1959) and Fortitude and Temperance, tr. Coogan (New York, 1954). Also Thomistic but valuable for the background to Aquinas is Leon Kennedy, De fortitudine Christiana (Gemblaci, 1938). An exhaustive account of one part of fortitude is R.-A. Gauthier, Magnanimité (Paris, 1951). On wisdom, see Eugene F. Rice, Jr., The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass., 1958). The principal classical documents on wise fortitude are the funeral oration of Pericles as reported by Thucydides, ii.vi; Plato, Republic, iv, and Laches, especially 192 (to be supplemented by such briefer statements as Laws, 630A or 659A); Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, specifically iii.6–9; Cicero, De officiis, especially i.xix–xxiii. For examples of Renaissance discussion of sapienlia el fortitudo and its parts, in addition to the works mentioned in note 3 or in the notes below, see Alexander Barclay, The Mirrour of Good Maners (Spenser Society, 1885), pp. 35–46; Leonardus Lessius, De iustitia et iure, ceterisqve virtvtibus cardinalibus (Lyons, 1663), liber iii, pp. 573–594; Justus Lipsius, Two Bookes of Constancie, tr. Stradella, ed. Kirk (New Brunswick, 1939), pp. 78–80; Giovanni Botero, The Reason of State, tr. Waley (New Haven, 1956), Bk. ii, especially Chapters 1, 10, 12; William Leighton, Vertue Triumphant Or A lively Description of the Foure Vertues Cardinall (London, 1603), stanzas 125–165; Joseph Hall's characters of “a valiant man” and “the patient man” in Works, ed. Wynter (Oxford, 1863), vi, 95–98; Phineas Fletcher's verse portraits of Patience and Andreos in The Purple Island, x.vii–xi; Taylor, Holy Dying, iii. viii in Works, ed. Heber & Eden (London, 1883), iii, 341–346.

9 De ofjiciis, i.xix.

10 (London, 1622), s.v. “courage” (italics mine).

11 Aristotle, Ethics, 1145A; Fludd, De philosophia Moysaica (Gouda, 1638), fol. 8r (cf. i Mach. iii.19: “de caelo fortitudo est”); Gifford [Gyffard], A Treatise of True Fortitude (London, 1594), sig. A5r, C6v–C7r.

12 “An Epistle to Sir Edward Sacville.”

13 Religio Medici, i.25. A result of this view is that the sapientia et fortitudo formula occurs regularly in the legends of saints and martyrs. Fox's Martyrs, especially the eleventh book, offers innumerable examples.

14 Paradise Lost, ix.31–32 (cf. Of Reformation, Columbia Works, iii, 11); De doctrina, ii.x, Works, xvii, 248. Comprehensive though it is in many ways, the De doctrina gives no elaborate discussion of fortitudo, perhaps because the subject is also slighted in those treatises of Christian doctrine which presumably underlie Milton's own work. John Wolleb, upon whom Milton seems to have relied most heavily, devotes less than a page to fortitude; see The Abridgement of Christian Divinity, tr. Ross (London, 1656), p. 392 (=Compendium theologiae Chrisiianae, Cambridge, 1642, pp. 257–258). See further Peter Martyr, The Common Places, iii.12, tr. Marten (London, 1583), pp. 270–272; Melancthon, Loci praecipui theologici (Leipzig, 1559), p. 836; Amandus Polanus, The Substance of Christian Religion, 3rd ed. (London, 1600), pp. 514–516; Zacharius Ursinus, The Summe of Christian Religion, tr. Parry (London, 1633), p. 599; and William Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (London, ?1638), p. 204. Bartholomew Keckermann, whose Systema SS. theologiae (Hanau, 1622) perhaps joined Polanus' work to influence Wolleb and therefore Milton, does provide a fairly lengthy treatment of fortitudo in his Systema ethicae (London, 1607), pp. 159–169, but it is less complete than Aquinas' discussion and unlike the other treatises mentioned in this note, it differs from Aquinas in significant ways. It is worth noting that Polanus, p. 515, and Ursinus, p. 599, attribute “princelike” or “heroicall” fortitude to Samson.

15 Works, x, 272, See also the Commonplace Book's section “de fortitudine” (Works, xviii, 134).

16 Works, vii, 51, 75, 451.

17 For Milton on despair, see De doclrina, ii.iii, Works, xvii, 58. The best account of Samson's despair is D. C. Allen's The Harmonious Vision (Baltimore, 1954), pp. 71–94.

18 Milton, De doctrina, ii.x, Works, xvii, 244; Aquinas, Summa, ii–ii, Q. 131. Both depend on Aristotle, Ethics, 1107B and 1125B. Robert Ashley, Of Honour, ed. Heltzel (San Marino, Calif., 1947), pp. 41–43, warns against ambition in a way paralleled, as Heltzel notes (pp. 77–78, n. 50), by Eliot, Nashe, Primaudaye, and others. OED 5, quoting this passage from Samson, defines ambition as “canvassing, personal sollicitation of honours.”

19 Aquinas, Summa, ii–ii, Q. 46; see also Wilson, Christian Dictionary, s.v. “foole” and Milton, De doctrina, ii.ii (pp. 30–32), and cf. the “sensual folly” of Comus, 974. Wolleb, p. 392, notes that one of the opposites to fortitude is “desire of pleasures.”

20 Aristotle, Ethics, vii.vii; Aquinas, Summa, ii–ii, Qq. 137–138. For Milton, mollities is opposed both to chastity (De doctrina, ii.ix, p. 218) and to patience (ii.x, p. 252); see further his definitions of constancy (ii.ii, p. 46) and patience (ii.iii, p. 66). Ames's term for mollities is “a fainting of mind” (p. 204); for him too it is opposed to constancy and perserverance.

21 Summa, ii–ii, O. 126.

22 On patristic malitia, see Kaske, p. 434. Cf. Cicero, De officiis, i.xix; Barclay, p. 42; Wilson, s.v. “maliciousnesse.”

23 A Treatise of True Fortitude, sig. B2r.

24 See Cicero, Academica, ii.44; Aquinas, ii-ii, Q. 123, A. 10; Erasmus, Enchiridion militis Chrisliani, v (London, 1905), p. 89; Castiglione, The Courtier, iv, tr. Hoby (London, Everyman Edition, n.d.), p. 272; Montaigne, Essays, ii.31; Wilson, s.v. “anger”; More, Enchiridion, p. 73. The passage from St. Paul is Eph. v.26, a verse quoted by Milton in his discussion of ira (De doctrina, ii.viii, p. 208).

25 See O. F. Emerson, “Legends of Cain, Especially in Old and Middle English,” PMLA, xxi (1906), 916–926; Kaske, p. 438; and John M. Steadman, “‘Men of Renown’: Heroic Virtue and the Giants of Genesis 6:4 (Paradise Lost, xi, 638–99),” PQ, xl (1961), 580–587. Ambition is generally attributed to giants; see Merritt Y. Hughes, “Milton's Celestial Battle and the Theogonies,” Studies in Honor of T. W. Baldwin, ed. Allen (Urbana, Ill., 1958), pp. 237–253.

26 Prominent among Biblical statements of the idea are Job xxviii.28; Prov. ii.3–7; Eccle. ix.1–2. Kaske, pp. 445–446 and notes 67–68, cites these and others, referring also to Augustine and Gregory. Milton (De doctrina, ii.iii, p. 64) quotes in this connection Matt, x.28: “Fear not them which kill the body.”

27 De natura deorum, i.2; cf. Aristotle, Ethics, vii.1, Keckermann, Systema ethica, p. 253, and More, Enchiridion, pp. 172–173, 197–198.

28 Samson is thus to receive most of those tributes mentioned by Aristotle (Rhetoric, 1161A) and by Robert Ashley (Of Honour, pp. 60–61) as due men deserving of honor.

29 After proof for this article had been read, Professor William O. Harris published his study of “Despair and ‘Patience as the Truest Fortitude’ in Samson Agonistes,” ELH, xxx (1963), 107–120. I regret that this study was not available to me earlier. On that point which we both discuss—the fortitude of saints and martyrs, specifically as mentioned by the chorus in ll. 1287–1296—Professor Harris and I appear to disagree only on one significant point. He seems to argue that Samson embodies only the “patience … of saints,” whereas I believe that Samson embodies also the “Heroic magnitude” of the conquering hero. The general congruity of our arguments, however, appears to me to lend additional support to our separately achieved beliefs that fortitude is crucial to the interpretation of the play.