Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/122

 104 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. tatively made it part of the Latin Church forever. Perhaps in fantastic — incipiently barbaric — extrava- gance of interpretation, no Greek Christian writer had ever equalled the Commentary on Job by him who rightly was called Gregory the Great. -^ In the writings of these great Eathers of the Latin Church, whose personalities are so deeply representa- tive of the transition from the antique to the medi- aeval, are to be found those myriad mystical allegorical interpretations of Scripture which were to dominate the literature and inspire the art of the Middle Ages. Some they invented, some they took from Philo or the Christian Alexandrians. A study of these matters shows how the human spirit may be moulded by the instruments and forms which the tendencies of some epoch of its development have created. We have seen how the system of allegorical interpretation came into Christian use after it had been used by Jews and heathens. Christianity was a supremely spiritual religion ; it had a foundation in an historical antece- dent, the spirituality of which was cruder. It adopted the system Of allegorical interpretation in order to harmonize its antecedent with itself, and also as a fit- ting medium through which to express itself. The use of symbolism and allegory indicates a greater interest in the veiled truths of life than in life's visible facts. Conversely, this habit, once formed, XIV, 8, having spoken of npaKTi.Krj and ^ewptjTiK^ scientia, says that the latter is divided into historica interpretatio and intellegentia spiritalis, "spiritalis autem scientiae genera sunt tria, tropologia, allegoria, anagogia." Cf. Conlatio, XIV, 11. 1 In thirty-five books. This work is usually called the Moralia.