Keeping the Major Feasts in George Herbert’s The Temple

According to the gospel read in the Church of England on the First Sunday after the Epiphany, at the age of twelve Jesus slipped away from his parents during their Passover visit to Jerusalem in order to remain in the temple where he astounded the learned elders with his knowledge and understanding of scripture.¹ Comfortable in this religious setting, Jesus explained to his parents that he was where he belonged. With a similar sense of his natural place, George Herbert entered the University of Cambridge where he remained for nearly two decades, first as a student, finally as Public Orator, not resigning his appointment until 1627. Clearly, Herbert felt he was where he was meant to be. During his Cambridge years, the poet no doubt spent many hours in the college chapels inspired by the architecture and the “furniture so fine” (“Affliction” [I], l. 7).² The “speckled stone” floors (“The Church-floore,” l. 1), soaring windows, and sweet music appealed to his sense of decorum and increased his attachment to the via media of the British Church.

While he admired “thy glorious household-stuffe” (“Affliction” [1],l. 9), Herbert valued the chapel buildings for their spiritual essence: the vita Christi depicted in church windows confirmed his belief that the priest becomes a window through the grace of God.³ Herbert’s relationship with the British Church is comprehensive: he embraces both the visual art and the written word. As a worshipper, he acknowledges the sanctity of the church and the prayer book that directs him to celebrate the feast days, taking their lessons into his heart. For Herbert, the temple and the human heart are related, both being appropriate dwelling places for the Lord. His poetic Temple provides him with a locus for his intimate colloquies with Jesus and for his creative imagining of the events of the gospel. As Richard Hughes proposed, “What Herbert felt about the Incarnation is, without question, the central issue of his poetry,” and “the church demonstrates the doctrine of the Incarnation in two ways, the first historically in the vita Christi, the second sacramentally in the Eucharist, and this is, up to a point, Herbert’s way.”⁴ Herbert’s commitment to a personal and aesthetic treatment of the Incarnation informs his poetic structure, The Temple, within which he situates the compelling poems of “The Church.”

If the vita Christi eventually leads Herbert to “The H. Communion,” “Heaven,” and “Love” (III), the gospel Jesus serves as his confidant and audience along the way. Immersed in the liturgy of the church, Herbert constructs his temple with materials provided by The Book of Common Prayer, which underwent many alterations before and after the reign of Elizabeth. The reformed edition of 1552 was amended by Elizabeth and “Puritanized” somewhat under King James.⁵ During Herbert’s lifetime, the established liturgy of The Book of Common Prayer recognized and prescribed daily prayer, Matins and Evensong, and organized the cyclical celebrations of the Christian year from Advent to Christmas, Lent and Good Friday to Easter. Christmas and Easter, followed by the Ascension, Whitsunday, and Trinity Sunday were known as the Major Feasts. In this essay I treat five of the poems Herbert writes to commemorate these feast days. I consider the poems as they reflect the transformation of the speaker’s heart and as they contribute to the structure of “The Church”

In his examination of Herbert’s “exact middle way,” Christopher Hodgkins describes Herbert’s union of belief and emotion: Herbert “believed that all human institutions, whether governmental, ecclesiastical, or social, are to be valued only insofar as they encourage a reformed faith and devotion in the individual believer’s heart.”⁶ To this end, Herbert, in The Temple, modifies the chronology of the events prescribed by The Book of Common Prayer to suit his own temperament, his aesthetic vision, and his spiritual and emotional yearnings; therefore, he opens “The Church” with his apprehension of the Passion. Because so many insightful readers have treated this sequence in detail, I shall consider the Incarnation and vita Christi in poems specifically concerned...