S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 7 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 1 5 1 Rastislav Nemec 2 First Sources of Allegory – Rhetorical Allegory 2.1 Augustine’s Contribution to Allegory The problem of reading and its methods in the Middle Ages has its primary roots in ancient times and the opus of Aurelius Augustinus (†430). Augustine’s treatise De doctrina christiana represents the first manual for reading and interpretation in the history of Christianity and had a huge impact on the approach of medieval scholars. On the one hand, it brought the fundamental truths of the faith (Lat. regula fidei), and on the other it offered a certain kind of repertoire of rules for interpreting the Holy Scripture (Augustine 2014, 185). Augustine enriches this issue with traditional knowledge of Cicero’s and Quintilian’s rhetoric, and for this reason his works cannot be separated from the foundation and applied rules of rhetoric (Lichner 2014, 139). Quintilian – just like Augustine later – understands allegory rhetorically as a term whose meaning is different than its spoken expression: “aliud dicit, aliud sentit”. He understands it as an instrument that resists strict systematization and precision of the language. Augustine explains and defines it similarly when he speaks about signs [2] as the means of human communication. Augustine discerns natural (Lat. naturalia) and agreed signs (Lat. placita). He understands agreed signs to be those with one meaning or those with several meanings. He differentiates them because some signs are of human and others of divine origin. Those of divine origin have a clear meaning (smoke as a sign of fire, etc.), while agreed signs, which include spoken and written words, can have various meanings. Thus, Augustine distinguishes between proper (Lat. propria) and figurative signs (Lat. translata), with allegory belonging to the group of metaphoric signs. According to Augustine, allegory enriches speech, preventing it from being “dull”. It also indicates another, spiritual meaning (from original Greek allé –“alius”) that does not result from the metaphoric meaning of words. From the epoch of the Greek Stoics, it was the privilege of philosophers to understand allegory and know how to interpret it. In the epoch of Augustine this is the privilege of rhetors. Other readers (Lat. incognizant) were not able to unveil the secrets hidden by means of allegory (Lichner 2020, 108).
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