Wednesday 15 June 2011

Peter Widdicombe: Noah and Foxes: Song of Songs 2:15 and the Patristic Legacy in Text and Art

In the carvings in the altarpiece in The Presentation in the Temple by the Master of the Life of the Virgin, Cologne c. 1460-75, a fox is depicted eating grapes from a vine in the background to a scene of the drunkenness of Noah. The drunkenness of Noah was widely interpreted in the Patristic and Medieval periods to be a type of Christ in the Passion. This paper will trace the history of the Patristic and Medieval interpretation of Song of Songs 2:15. Origen in Commentary on the Song of Songs 3, maintained that the verse could be taken in two ways. Foxes could refer to ‘powers and demonic depravities’ that in destroying the vines, ‘destroy the blossom of the virtues in the soul’. Those enjoined to capture the foxes are the ‘holy angels’. On the other hand, foxes could refer to the heretics who lead innocent believers, the vines, astray. In this interpretation, those enjoined to capture the foxes are the teachers of the Church. Gregory of Nyssa in Homilies on the Song of Songs 5 interpreted the little foxes to represent any powers that attempt to overcome the vineyard, that is, our human nature. It is the angelic powers, perhaps the apostles, who are to hunt down the foxes, casting them out of the lair of our hearts so that there may be a place for the Son of God to lay his head. Augustine quoted the verse, in Sermon 164.3, in the course of a discussion of Samson’s catching foxes to use them as firebrands. The foxes are heretics, the vineyard the Church. Bede took up this interpretation in Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles ii. 15; Bernard gave an elaborate version of it in Sermons on the Song of Songs 63-66; but Luther rejected the tradition outright. The paper will focus on the interpretation given the verse by the Patristic authors and the question of why a fox eating grapes should appear in the artistic tradition together with the drunken Noah will be addressed.

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