Guibert of Nogent and Gregory the Great on Preaching and Exegesis

GUIBERT OF NOGENT AND GREGORY THE GREAT ON PREACHING AND EXEGESIS 0 MANY MEDIAEVAL SCHOLARS Gregory the he Great was Gregorius ntJster, rather as Virgil among he Roman poets was the familiar Virgilius noster.1 He became perhaps the most significant single influence upon the detailed working out in the West of the system of interpretation adumbrated in the writings of Origen and Augustine and involving literal, allegorical and moral senses and the ana.gogical sense. Gregory also supplied a vast stock of material for interpreting specific texts, from which scholars borrowed freely for a millenium.2 Gregory became something of a patron for Guibert of Nogent towards the end of the eleventh century, when his mother sent him to school with his harsh and insistent tutor on the feast day of Gregory himself.3 Guibert speaks of other Fathers, too: Jerome, Gregory Nazianzus, Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea.4 But Gregory the Great remained a special influence upon him, not least because, as he explains, Gregory was instrumental in helping him make the change of habit in his reading which turned him from a secular to a Christian scholar.5 He says that Gregory holds the keys of the 'art' of exegesis; all its traditional rules are set out in its commentaries 1 H. de Lubac, Emegese Medievale (Paris, 1959), II, 537-8. 2 R. Wasselynck, 'L'influence de l'exegese de S. Gn~goire le Grand sur les commentaires bibliques medievaux ', Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale, 32 (1965), 157-204, lists mediaeval authors who make use of Gregory. a De Vita Sua I.4, PL 156.844A, and cf. Gesta Dei per Francos, Preface, PL 156.681-2 for more of Guibert's comments on his early education and the excessive love of poetry he had when he was young. 4 PL 156.339A, PL 156.489A (De Incarnatione) where Guibert couples Gregory and Jerome. s PL l56.29D 339.A. 584 GUIBERT OF NOGENT AND GREGORY THE GREAT 535 (veterum auctorum regulae) .6 Guibert was moved by this example to attempt a commentary of his own on Genesis, in which he tried to bring out the moral sense; and then he went on to comment on other books, he tells us, always laying the chief emphasis upon one of the higher senses.7 Guibert was an author of some stature, as he himself was well aware. He had a natural fluency and elegance which led him into early excesses as a poet,8 and sufficient conceit to think himself able to imitate the models the Fathers had left behind them. His Scriptural commentaries concentrate principally upon the Old Testament, because that was where he found a lack of patristic material: on Hosea, Amos and Jeremiah , for example, and even on Genesis, viewed from the point of view of the higher senses to complement Augustine's work on the literal sense of Genesis.9 Guibert's De Vita Sua has some claims to be an autobiography after the model of Augustine's Confessions, although it is also a history book.10 His De Pignoribus Sanctorum is, as we shall see, consciously modelled in part upon Gregory's Dialogues.11 As for his monographs , the De lncarn.atione, the De Bucella Judae data et de veritate Dominici corporis, the De Laude Sanctae Mariae, the De Virginitate,12 topical though they are in their subject-matter (compare Gilbert Crispin's Dialogue between a Jew and a Christian with the De lncarnatione) ,13 they belong loosely to the genre of Augustinian monographs and dialogues in their attempt to treat single issues. Guibert's large history, the a De Vita Sua I.17, PL 156.874B. 1 De Vita Sua I.17 PL 156.875-6. s Gesta Dei per Franoos, PL 156.681-2 and De Vita Sua I.17. 9 The entry for Guibert in F. Stegmliller, Repertorium Biblioum Medii Aevi (Madrid, 1950), II, gives an indication of surviving manuscripts. The Liber Quo Ordine Sermo F.ieri Debeat, the Moralia in Genesim, the Tropologiae in Osee, Amos and Jeremiam are printed in PL 156. 10 One comparison in particular is irresistible: Guibert places great emphasis upon the help his mother...