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The Left Hand of God: Despair in Medieval and Renaissance Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Susan Snyder
Susan Snyder*
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College
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Extract

A man of hell, that cals himselfe Despaire

(Faerie Queene, I, ix, 28)

Penser's moving description of the Redcrosse Knight's encounter with Despaire in Book One of The Faerie Queene is the culmination of a long and rich movement of thought and imagery. Here, as so often in his great Renaissance epic, Spenser looks back to the middle ages, drawing on a still-vital tradition to present the ugly, sinister figure with its knives and ropes and its soulpiercing arguments.

In spite of the tides of secularism, despair in its theological sense—loss of hope of salvation—figures significantly in Renaissance literature. Examining England alone, one notes its place in the traditional morality play pattern as the turning point of the hero's downward movement: Skelton's Magnyfycence is a prominent example. Despair episodes have a somewhat similar place in the prodigal son dramas which were popular during the middle decades of the sixteenth century, such plays as Lusty Juventus, Misogonus, and Nice Wanton.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 12 , 1965 , pp. 18 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1965

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References

1 Sir Thomas Wyatt and his Circle, Unpublished Poems, ed. Kenneth Muir (Liverpool, 1961, English Reprints Ser. no. 18), p. 20.

2 2 Corinthians ii. 6-7. This passage becomes a locus classicus for later discussions of despair. All Bible quotations are from the Vulgate, unless otherwise identified.

3 See section IV below.

4 In Matt, evang., I, 5 (Patrohgiae cursus completes … series latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, Paris, 1844-1880, XCII, 24). This series is hereafter abbreviated as PL.

5 Ambrose of Milan so identifies it in his commentary on the Corinthians passage (PL, XVII, 323). The prevailing view is summed up in the Liber de virtutibus et vitiis ad Widonem comitem, attributed to Alcuin (PL CI, 635): ‘Tristitiae duo sunt genera: unum salutiferum, alterum pestiferum. Tristitia salutaris est, quando de peccatis suis animus contristatur peccatoris, et ita contristatur, ut confessionem et poenitentiam agere quaerat, et converti se ad Deum desideret. Alia est tristitia huius saeculi, quae mortem operatur animae, quæ nihil in bono opere proficere valet, quae animum perturbat, et saepe in desperationem mittit, ut futurorum spem abstollat bonorum.'

6 De inst., IX, 9-11 (PL XLIX, 357-359).

7 Ibid., IX, 1 (cols. 351-353).

8 Differentiarutn libri II, n, 40, 166 (PL ixxxm, 96).

9 Liber de conflictu, 40 (PL LXXXIII, 1138).

10 XI, 12 (PL XLIX, 864).

11 Ibid., XXIII, 7 (col. 1254).

12 De spiritu et littera, XIV, 26 (PL XLIV, 217).

13 Rom. v. 20; 2 Cor. iii. 6.

14 Augustine, Sertn. CXLV, 3 (PL xxxvm, 791-792).

15 Rule, ed. Dom Justin McCann (London, 1952), cap. vii, p. 48.

16 Sententiarum libri III, n, 14, 3 (PL LXXXIII, 617).

17 De gradibus, 2 (PL CLXXXII, 943-944). Bernard also describes the stages of ascent through the metaphor of kissing the foot, hand, and mouth of God (Serm. Ill in Cant., PL CLXXXIII, 794-796). Etienne Gilson points out that Bernard's three stages are anticipated by Gregory the Great in Moralia in Job, XXII (The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, tr. A. H. C. Downes, New York, 1940, p. 19 and p. 218 n.).

18 De gradibus, 4 (PL CLXXXH, 948-950).

19 Serm. XXXVII in Cant., 6, Serm. XLII in Cant., 6, and Serm. LXXXII in Cant., 7 (PL CLXXxm, 973, 990, 1180-1181).

20 Serm. X in Cant., 5-10 (PL CLXxxrn, 821-824).

21 De anima, 13-15 (PL CLXXVII, 185-188). For the English versions, see Sawles Warde, ed. R. M. Wilson (Leeds, 1938), which contains a parallel text of Ayenbite.

22 PL CXCVI, 1-64. The stages of ascent to pure contemplation are represented by the children of Jacob (God), by his wives Leah (passion) and Rachel (reason) and their handmaids. The first two born to Leah are Reuben (fear) and Simeon (sorrow); only after these can come Levi (hope) and Judah (love).

23 The English Writings of Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole, ed. Hope Emily Allen (Oxford, 1931), p. 90.

24 The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counselling, ed. Phyllis Hodgson (London, 1944, E.E.T.S. 218), p. 84.

25 Cloud, p. 123; The Scale of Perfection, ed. Evelyn Underhill (London, 1923), pp. 129-131; also p. 343.

26 The English Works of John Fisher, ed. John E.B. Mayor (London, 1876, E.E.T.S.E.S. 27), pp. 234-267.

27 WA XL, 2 Abt., 325. This and all subsequent Luther references, unless otherwise identified, are to the Weimarer Ausgabe (WA): D. Martin Luthers Werke, ed. J. K. F. Knaake, G. Kawerau, E. Thiele, and others (58 vols., Weimar, 1883-1963). This edition also includes Die deutsche Bibel (12 vols., 1906-1961); Tischreden 1531-1546 (TR) (6 vols., 1912-1921); and Briefwechsel (Br.) (11 vols., 1930-1948). Here and elsewhere when they are available I use translations from Luther, Works, ed. and tr. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann (St. Louis, 1955-1964), xn, 310.

28 WA XL, 2 Abt., 380.

29 Ibid., 334-337.

30 Ibid., 326; Pelikan, XII, 311.

31 WA XL, 2 Abt., 327; Pelikan, XII, 310-311.

32 WA XL, 2 Abt., 415; Pelikan, XII, 372. Italics mine. See also De servo arbitrio (WA XVIII, 632-633).

33 PL LXXIII, 959.

35 Bertram Colgrave lists two derivative poems in Old English, some accounts in chronicles, continental recensions, and a version in the South English Legendary. See Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 19-25.

36 Ibid., pp. 94-99.

37 Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill, 1935), pp. 242-244.

38 Revelations, p. 148. Julian herself, after the termination of her visions, was tempted by the devil to despair (pp. 141-142).

39 Moralia in Job, IX, 69 (PL LXXV, 897). The idea of this temptation as a source of comfort and strength appears also in the later medieval tract Epistola optima contra desperacionem, B.M. MS. Reg. 7. B. VII, fol. 300'.

40 The Book of Privy Counselling, p. 168 (see n. 24 above); The Goad of Love, ed. Clare Kirchberger (New York, 1952), p. 15.

41 Ad Theodorutn lapsutn, 1 (Patrologiae cursus completes … series graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne, Paris, 1854-1866, XLVH, 301-302). This series is hereafter abbreviated as PC Latin translations are used throughout for the Greek fathers.

42 II, 14, 4 (PL LXXXIII, 617).

43 Hugo of St. Victor, The Sacraments of the Christian Faith, tr. Roy J. Deferrari (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), p. 409 (De sacramentis, n, 14, 4; PL CLXXVI, 558).

44 Erich Vogelsang, Der angefochtene Christus bei Luther (Berlin and Leipzig, 1932, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte no. 21), pp. 23-24.

45 WA v, 607.

46 Vogelsang, pp. 45-52.

47 Psychopannychia (Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. W. Baum, E. Cunitz, and E. Reuss, Brunswick, 1863-1900, Corpus Reformatorum, v, 224).

48 Opera, vi, 80-82.

49 WA LVI, 442.

50 Ibid., 387,1. 20, cited by Gordon Rupp, E., The Righteousness of God: Luther Studies (New York, 1953), p. 188.Google Scholar

51 ‘Neque enim eiusmodi angustiis obsessus filius Dei sperare in patrem desiit’ (Opera, vi, 32).

52 WA xvn, 2 Abt., 203.

53 See the summary by Lewis, C. S., English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford, 1954), pp. 187–189.Google Scholar

54 The Prayer Book of Queen Elizabeth 1559 (London, 1890), p. 153.

55 Nowell, Alexander, Catechism, tr. Thomas Norton, ed. Corrie, G. E. (Cambridge, 1853, Parker Society no. 53), pp. 177–178.Google Scholar

56 The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Holbrook Jackson (London, 1932, Everyman's Library), III, 428; cf. Luther, Resolutiones (WA 1, 540).

57 Anatomy, III, 394.

58 Thomas Rogers, The Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England, ed. J. J. S. Perowne (Cambridge, 1854, Parker Society no. 52), p. 142.

59 Helen C. White, English Devotional Literature 1600-1640 (Madison, Wisconsin, I93i). pp. 53-54-

60 Sermons, ed. George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson (Berkeley, 1953-1962), VIII, 10, p. 249; ix, 4, pp. 119-120.

61 Anatomy, III, 399.

62 My translation of the mixed Latin and German of the original, WA, TR, III, Nr. 3798.

63 WA XL, 2 Abt., 391; Pelikan, XII, 355. It should be noted that Luther's anti-rationalism applies only when regnum Christi is under consideration; reason's proper sphere is regnum mundi. When reason trespasses into the spiritual realm it wants to be justified by the Law, and the impossibility of this leads it logically to despair. See B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Reason: a Study in the Theology of Luther (Oxford, 1962), chs. 5-7. The influence of Lutheran anti-rationalism is strikingly illustrated in a Dutch woodcut of the prodigal son (c. 1540), which shows him rioting with such bad company as Mundus, Caro, Vanitas, Avaritia, Heresis—and Ratio (Samuel C. Chew, The Pilgrimage of Life, New Haven, 1962, fig. 77).

64 Hugh Latimer, Sermons and Remains, ed. G. E. Corrie (Cambridge, 1845, Parker Society no. 20), p. 148.

65 The Catechism with Other Pieces, ed. John Ayre, (Cambridge, 1844, Parker Society no. 13), p. 627.

66 In Doctor Faustus, v, ii, 1989-1992, Mephostophilis claims that it was he who led Faustus's eye to certain passages in the Bible which convince him in the beginning of the play that no one can be saved. This passage appears only in the B text.

67 WA, TR, III, Nr. 3798. My translation.

68 Becon, Catechism, p. 628.

69 For example, Bede (PL xci, 216-217), Hrabanus Maurus (PL cvn, 503-505), Glossa ordinaria, quoting Isidore (PL cxin, 98-99). Luther saw in Cain and Abel the conflict 'between reason's self-appointed worship and the divinely-appointed worship of faith' (Gerrish, p. 93; cf. WA x, 1 Abt., 1 Halfte, 273-274).

70 Hrabanus Maurus, p. 503; Glossa, p. 98.

71 WA XVIII, 672.

72 WA, TR, III, Nr. 3799.

73 Genevan Confession, Art. XVIII (Opera, XXII, 93); Institutes, m, 17, 7 and 18, 8. For this and subsequent quotations of the latter I use the translation of John Allen, Institutes of the Christian Religion (7th American ed., Philadelphia, 1936).

74 Responsio ad Sadoleti epistolam (Opera, v, 395).

75 Inst., III, 4, 2-3; 17-18; 24.

76 Legenda Aurea, ed. Th. Graesse (3d ed., Vratislavia, 1890), p. 626.

77 Chapter xxxiii, verses 10-12, provides a summary of God's pleas: “Tu ergo, fili hominis, die ad domum Israel: Sic locuti estis, dicentes: Iniquitates nostrae et peccata nostra super nos sunt; et in ipsis nos tabescimus; quomodo ergo vivere poterimus? Die ad eos: Vivo ego, dicit Dominus Deus, nolo mortem impii, sed ut convertatur impius a via sua, et vivat. Convertimini, convertimini a viis vestris pessimis; et quare moriemini, domus Israel? Tu itaque fili hominis, die ad filios populi tui: Justitia justi non liberabit eum, in quacumque die peccaverit; et impietas impii non nocebit ei, in quacumque die conversus fuerit ab impietate sua.'

78 ‘Tunc videns Judas, qui eum tradidit, quod damnatus esset, poenitentia ductus retulit triginta argenteos principibus sacerdotum et senioribus dicens: Peccavi tradens sanguinem justum’ (Matt, xxvii, 3-4).

79 Origen, In Matt., 117 ﹛PG xm, 1768).

80 In Matt, evang. expositio, 27 (Opera omnia, introd. Vernon J. Bourke, New York, 1948-1950, x, 262).

81 Opera, XLV, 747-748.

82 Gesta Romanorum, ed. Hermann Oesterley (Berlin, 1872), pp. 350-354. Hope Traver traces the history of the four daughters allegory in The Four Daughters of God (Philadelphia, 1907).

83 ‘Non daemon est qui moerorem movet, sed moeror potius vires daemoni administrat, cogitationesque malas suggerit’ (Ad Stagirium a dcemone vexatum, n; PG XLVH, 449).

84 Moralia, III, 21 (PL LXXV, 609-610).

85 Injoh. evang., XLI, 8 (PL xxxv, 1696).

86 Serm. XX, 4 (PL XXXVIII, 140).

87 Serm. CXLII, 1 (PL XXXVIII, 778); In Ps. CXLIV, 11 (PL XXXVII, 1876-1877); cf. commentary on Psalms c and ci (ibid., 1282 and 1301).

88 For example, he cites against despair the examples of Zacchaeus and Matthew, but follows them with the opposite fates of Ahab, Judas, Ananias, and Sapphira, ‘ut per illos desperationem ejiciamus, per hos vero socordiam exscindamus, neque supinus sit animus ad monita qua; prsescribuntur’ (Horn. XI in i Corinth.; PG LXI, 94). The ideal of the middle way between despair and presumption appears elsewhere in his homilies on the epistles: PG LXI, 75; PG LXII, 396, 447-448.

89 Moralia, II, 1 (PL LXXV, 555). This is an unusual use of David, whose story is usually advanced as an argument against despair. For the fear-hope balance, see also later sections of the Moralia: PL LXXVI, 139-140, 495-496, 570, 686-688.

90 Sertn. LI in Cant., 8 (PL CLXXXIII, 1028; see also ibid., 806 and 824).

91 The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle, ed. Mabel Day (London, 1952, E.E.T.S. 225), pp. 169-170.

92 Sent., ra, 26, 2, 1, Conclusio (Opera omnia, ed. A. C. Peltier, Paris, 1864-1871, iv, 582).

93 Tractatus qui vocatur Templum, B.M. MS. Harl. 3244, fol. 142'. The via media notion was less popular with the Reformers, being antithetical to the complete commitment of evangelical faith. Calvin's mixture of joy and sorrow (Inst., m, 2, 17-18) sounds like Augustine's fear-hope balance, but in fact he explicitly rejects such an interpretation as a 'pestilent philosophy’ (24). Calvin's idea is not of a balance but of a root-branch relationship. Fear may nip at the twigs and keep them pruned, but the root of hope remains untouched.

94 Serm. L de diversis (PL CLXXXIH, 673). Bernard's exposition recalls Cicero's Tusculanae disputationes, iv, 6, which also treats the four basic emotions (in this case libido, laetitia, metus, and aegritudo), the virtues that result from their proper ordering, and the perturbations that arise from disorder.

95 ‘Si quidem nihil aliud est virtus quam animi affectus ordinatus et moderatus’ (Benj. Min., 7; PL cxcvr, 6).

96 Ibid., 66 (cols. 47-48). Judas is given as an example.

97 ST, III, 84, 9, ad 3. For quotations from the Sumtna theologica I use the translation of the English Dominican Fathers (1st American ed., New York, 1947-1948).

98 Serm. I, Dotn. IVin Quadrag. (Opera, xm, 171). Like Bernard, Bonaventura discusses sin in terms of disordered emotional balance: his four emotions are spes, timor, gaudium, and amor.

99 Agayne Despayre, B.M. MS. Add. 37049, fol. 92v.

100 Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (London, 1907), I, 6.

101 Timothy Bright, A Treatise of Melancholie, facs. of 1586 ed. (New York, 1940), title page.

102 Ibid., sig. *iiiv.

103 Anatomy, II, 396.

104 Ibid., III, 395-408.

105 Jacques de Vitry, The Exetnpla, or Illustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares, ed. T. F. Crane (London, 1890), pp. 36-37; Robert of Brunne, Handling Synne, ed. F. J. Furnivall (London, 1901-1902, E.E.T.S. 119, 123), 11. 8441-8578.

106 In epist. II ad Corinth., n (PL XVII, 297-298).

107 Horn. V in II Thess. (PG txa, 495).

108 Rule, cap. xxvii, p. 76.

109 Isidore, Differentiarum libri II, n, 40,170 (PL Lxxxm, 98); Liber de virtutibus, 33 (PL Ci, 635); Hrabanus Maurus, De vitiis et virtutibus, m, 53 (PL CXII, 1377).

110 Fol. 93r.

111 WA XVIII, 270-278; WA, TR, II, Nr. 1299. Luther's advice to the spiritually oppressed is collected in Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, ed. and tr. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia, 1955), chs. 3 and 4.

112 Fol. 93r.

113 Horn. LXXIX in joh. (PG IIX, 425).

114 Greta Hort, Piers Plowman and Contemporary Religious Thought (New York, 1938), pp. 22-23, 113.

115 Scale, p. 49; The Chastising of God's Children, ed. J. Bazire and E. Colledge (Oxford, 1957). pp. 119-120.

116 WA, TR, v, Nr. 5658a.

117 WA LVI, 400. Contemplation of the ‘naked God'—that is, God absolute, God the Judge—is too terrible for weak human nature. One must rather turn to the God of promises, the God revealed through Christ: ‘Hunc Deum non nudum, sed vestitum et revelatum verbo suo necesse est nos apprehendere, alioqui certa desperatio nos opprimet’ (WA XL, 2 Abt., 329).

118 Ad Theod. laps., 1 (PG XLVH, 306-307).

119 Ibid. (col. 288).

120 Chrysostom's brand of semi-Pelagianism, while not dominant in the later middle ages, was far from dead. This same emphasis on self-help dominates the medieval English tract A consolatyone agenst Desperation: ‘And why then shulde we fall into this daungerus goulfe of desperation / seinge it lyithe in our selves to avoyde it’ (B.M. MS. Had. 1713, fol. 139’).

121 In Ps. XXXVI, 4 (PL xxxvi, 358).

122 Sent., II, 14 (PL LXXXIII, 617).

123 Poenitentium liber, 38 (PL CXII, 1423); cf. Ezek. xviii and xxxiii.

124 Sister Mary Catharine O'Connor surveys the whole ars moriendi tradition in The Art of Dying Well (New York, 1942).

125 Ars moriendi, facs. of editioprinceps, c. 1450, ed. W. Harry Rylands (1881), woodcut 3 and fol. 8r.

126 Ibid., woodcut 4 and fol. 10r.

127 See Sr. Mary Catharine, parts III and IV.

128 See section v below.

129 The Seven Deadly Sins (Lansing, Mich., 1952), pp. 106-107.

130 Ibid., p. 73.

131 Ibid., p. 59.

132 xxxi, 87-89 (PL LXXVI, 620-622).

133 Bloomfield, pp. 356-357, n. 25.

134 Ibid., p. 96.

135 Ibid., p . 213.

136 PL CLXXVI, 997-1010.

137 English Metrical Homilies from Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century, ed. John Small (Edinburgh, 1862), pp. 47-59.

138 The Book of Vices and Virtues: a Fourteenth Century Translation of the ‘Somme le roi' ofLorens d'Orleans, ed. W. Nelson Francis (London, 1942, E.E.T.S. 217), p. 24.

139 “Tractatus de virtutibus et viciis', in Johan Huizinga, Uber die Verknüpfung des Poetischen mit dem Theologischen bei Alanus de Insulis (Amsterdam, 1932), pp. 183-198.

140 Centiloquium, 1, 21 (Opera, vn, 363): ‘Desperado est voluntas gravedinem reprimens, de adjutorio ad perficienda agenda diffidens, sive de remuneratione divina, propter susdnentiam gravedinis quae est in implendis praeceptis, diffidens'; cf. Chaucer, ‘Parson's Tale', 11. 1069-1074, based on the Sutnma of Raymond de Pennaforte.

141 De poenitentia horn., 1 (PG XLIX, 279-280).

142 PL CXII, 1327.

143 Fol. 140r.

144 Expositio in Psalt. (PL LXX, 773); cited by Peter Lombard, Comm. in Psalmos (PL CXCI, 978).

145 Serm. XXXVII and XLII in Cant. (PL CLXXxra, 973-974, 989).

146 In epist. ad Ephes., iv (PL CXII, 412); cited by Hrabanus Maurus, In epist. ad Ephes., IV (PL cxn, 434).

147 PL ci, 1194; Summa, III, 34 (Verona, 1744), p. 434.

148 Bloomfield, p. 84.

149 Moralia, iv, 51 (PL LXXV, 662-663); cf. Chrysostom, Horn. LXXXVI in evang. Matt. (PG Lvm, 767): ‘A parvis itaque sic magna inducit malignus ille daemon; a magnis desperationem.'

150 Bede, Super Parabolas Salomonis, n, 18 (PL xci, 991).

151 ‘De fuga et reductione filii prodigi’ (PL CLXXXIII, 757-761).

152 WA XVIII, 684, 679.

153 WA XL, 2 Abt., 374.

154 Sent., II, 43, 3, 2, Conclusio (Opera, III, 636); see also 620.

155 Matt. xii. 31-32; Mark iii. 29; Luke xii. 10.

156 Mot alia, VIII, 27 (PL LXXV, 817).

157 De civitate Dei, 1, 20, 26, 39-40.

158 Ad Stag. II, passim (PG XLVII, 447-472).

159 Medieval Handbooks of Penance, ed. John T. McNeill and Helena Gamer (New York, 1938, Columbia Univ. Records of Civilization, no. 29), p. 207.

160 Hugo of St. Victor, De sacramentis, II, 16, 2 (PL CLXXVI, 583-584).

161 Legenda aurea, p . 427.

162 English Metrical Homilies, pp. 53-59.

163 Manuel, 11. 4577-4578 (ed. with Robert of Brunne's Handlyng Synne, E.E.T.S. 119,123).

164 Ad Theod. laps., I (PG XLVH, 281).

166 Liber de virtutibus, 33 (PL ci, 635).

167 Vices and Virtues, p. 29.

168 1\ 725-727.

169 Anatomy, ra, 394. Bright also notes the tendency of melancholies toward self-destruction (p. III ). Aside from the treatises on melancholy, most Renaissance discussions of suicide contribute little to the problem, being concerned with motives other than despair of salvation—social benefit, mundane adversity, personal honor. But it is noteworthy that Donne, Montaigne, and the commentators of the Geneva Bible all felt it necessary to point out that the suicide under discussion was not caused by despair (Donne, Biathanatos, facs. of ist ed., New York, 1930, pp. 27-29; Montaigne, Essais, ed. Albert Thibaudet, Paris, 1950, II, 3, 398; Geneva Bible, 1570 ed., gloss on Judges xvi. 30). In the popular mind, suicide was the result of despair.

170 Confessio amantis, III, 3389 ad fin. See Metamorphoses, XIV, 698-761.

171 Émile Mile, Religious Art in France, XIII Century, tr. Dora Nussey (London, 1913), p. 99.

172 Henri Focillon, The Art of the West in the Middle Ages (London, 1963), 1 (Romanesque Art), plate ii 3.

173 Male, XIII Century, p. 109.

174 The Stones of Venice, ed. L. March Phillipps (London, 1907), 11, 307-308.

175 Iconologia del cavaliere Cesare Ripa Perugino (Perugia, 1764-1767), II, 244.

176 Mâle, L'Art religieux de la fin du moyen age en France (2d ed., Paris, 1922), pp. 334-336, 328-329.%

177 K. Künstle, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, I, 167, cited by Dietrich Ruprecht, Tristitia (Göttingen, 1959, Palaestra 227), p. 12 n.

178 Mâle, Fin, p. 336.

179 The odd episode at the end of Spenser's despair canto, in which the abstraction Despaire attempts his own self-destruction, probably owes something to iconography.

180 Cassian, Collatio XII, 6 (PL XLIX, 878); De ccenobiorum inst., IX, 13 (PL XLIX, 360); Gregory, Moralia, Pref. (PL LXXV, 521); Epistola optima contra desperacionem, fol. 300“; Agayne Despayre, fols. 91r, 92v.

181 Male, XIII Century, p. 115.

182 Adolph Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Medieval Art from Early Christian Times to the Thirteenth Century (London, 1939), pp. 9-10.

183 '… ne, amorem conditoris deserens, quasi a duce destitutus in via remaneat, et confossus gladio latrocinantis desperationis ruat’ (Moralia, vni, 26; PL LXXV, 829).

184 Augustine (PLxxxvm, 536); Chrysostom (PGLXI, 75); Gregory (PLLXXVI, 389); Bernard (PL CLXXXIII, 70); Bonaventura (Opera, XIII, 171, IX, 649).

185 Bonaventura, Serm. IDom. IV in Quadrag. (Opera, xm, 171); English Metrical Homilies, p. 58.

186 Ad Theod. laps., 1 (PG XLVII, 280).

187 Augustine, In Ps. CI, 10 (PL XXXVII, 1301); Gregory, Moralia, xxvi, 35-36 (PL LXXVI, 369-370).

188 Augustine, In Ps. LXVII, 31 (PL xxxvi, 832); Peter Lombard, Sent., n, 43, 2 (PL “*£xcn, 754); Goad of Love, pp. 179-180.

189 Fol. 300r.

190 Moralia, ix, 80 (PL LXXV, 902).

191 Liber floridus of Ghent (c. 1120), cited by Katzenellenbogen, p. 65.

192 Serm. LVIII in Cant., 11 (PL CLXXXIII, 1061).

193 Serm. II in Dom. XIX post Pentecostem (Opera, xm, 456).

194 Serm. CCXXXV, 2, 3 (PL XXXVIII, 1119).

195 Injoh. evang., XXXVIII, 7 (PL xxxv, 1678); Conf., x , 3.

196 Scale, pp. 319-323; ‘Commentary on Isaiah 38', Selected Works of Richard Rolle, ed. G. C. Heseltine (London, 1930), p. 160.

197 Moralia, via, 29 (PL LXXV, 818).

198 Gregory, PL LXXV, 821; Isidore, PL LXXXIII, 617.

199 Rupp, , The Righteousness of God, p. 282.Google Scholar

198 Gregory, PL LXXV, 821; Isidore, PL LXXXIII, 617.

199 Ruppe, , The Righteousness of God, p. 282.Google Scholar