Late Antiquity
In Judaism, bible hermeneutics notably uses midrash, a Jewish method of interpreting the Hebrew Bible and the rules which structure the Jewish laws.[1] The early allegorizing trait in the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible figures prominently in the massive oeuvre of a prominent Hellenized Jew of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, whose allegorical reading of the Septuagint synthesized the traditional Jewish narratives with Platonism. Philo's allegorizing, in which he continued an earlier tradition, had little effect on later Jewish thought, in part because the Jewish culture of Alexandria dispersed by the 4th century.[2]
In the 3rd century, the theologian Origen, a graduate of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, formulated the principle of the three senses of Scripture (literal, moral, and spiritual) from the Jewish method of interpretation used by Saint Paul in Epistle to the Galatians chapter 4.[3] In the 4th century, the theologian Augustine of Hippo developed this doctrine which became the four senses of Scripture.[4]
Prudentius wrote the first surviving Christian purely allegorical freestanding work, Psychomachia ("Soul-War"), in about 400.[5] The plot consists of the personified "good" virtues of Hope, Sobriety, Chastity, Humility, etc. fighting the personified "evil" vices of Pride, Wrath, Paganism, Avarice, etc. The personifications are women, because in Latin words for abstract concepts have feminine grammatical gender; an uninformed reader of the work might take the story literally as a tale of many angry women fighting one another because Prudentius provides no context or explanation of the allegory.[5]
In this same period of the early 5th century, three other authors of importance to the history of allegory emerged: Claudian, Macrobius, and Martianus Capella. Little is known of these authors, even if they were "truly" Christian or not. Still, we know they handed down the inclination to express learned material in allegorical form, mainly through personification, which later became a standard part of medieval schooling methods.[6] Claudian's first work In Rufinum attacked the ruthless Rufinus and would become a model for the 12th century Anticlaudianus, a well-known allegory for how to be an upstanding man. As well his Rape of Proserpine served up a litany of mythological allegories, personifications, and cosmological allegories.[6] Neoplatonist commentators[7] used allegory as a rhetorical, philosophical and religious devise in reading ancient mythology, Homer,[8] and Plato.[7] Macrobius wrote Commentary of the Dream of Scipio, providing the Middle Ages with the tradition of a favorite topic, the allegorical treatment of dreams.[6] Martianus Capella wrote De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ("Marriage of Philology and Mercury"), the title referring to the allegorical union of intelligent learning with the love of letters. It contained short treatises on the "seven liberal arts" (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music) and thus became a standard textbook, greatly influencing educators and students throughout the Middle Ages.[6]
Boethius, perhaps the most influential author of Late Antiquity, first introduced readers of his work Consolation of Philosophy to the personified Lady Philosophy, the source of innumerable later personified figures (such as Lady Luck, Lady Fortune, etc.)[6] After Boethius, there exists no known work of allegorical literature until the 12th century. Although allegorical thinking, elements, and artwork abound during this period, it was not until the rise of the medieval university in the High Middle Ages that sustained allegorical literature appeared again.[6]
