One cannot read far in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa before encountering a quotation introduced by “The Gloss says….” Whatever follows invariably contains some insightful observation on the biblical text.
By “The Gloss” Thomas means what later scholars called the Glossa Ordinaria, the standard and ubiquitous Bible commentary of the High Middle Ages. The Glossa is a compilation of excerpts from patristic and medieval biblical exegesis, compiled and arranged in the twelfth-century. It was originally used as an aid for masters lecturing on the Bible in the northern schools of France.
The Glossa is known by its unique layout: biblical text spaciously written in the center, surrounded by marginal commentary and interwoven with shorter glosses. The layout strikingly resembles that of the Talmud, especially the form standardized by Daniel Bomberg’s sixteenth-century edition. In fact, it remains debatable which text inspired the format of the other.
C. S Lewis remarked that there “was nothing medieval people liked better, or did better, than sorting out and tidying up. Of all our modern inventions I suspect that they would most have admired the card index.” The Glossa is a noteworthy example of this love for sorting and tidying. It is the fruit of a long, intense effort to search through the patristic corpus and excerpt passages (sententiae) that elucidate the biblical text. In a remarkable feat of scribal craft, these excerpts were arranged on the manuscript page to allow the reader to move easily from biblical text to commentary and back again.
As a teaching tool, it often presents a number of disputed questions, each backed with their own authorities, which welcome student and master to discuss matters further.
On the issue of six-day versus simultaneous creation, Bede is set against Augustine. On whether the Septuagint or the Hebrew text should be preferred, Augustine is set against Jerome. On the number of people who entered Egypt with Jacob, Scripture is set against itself, and then Augustine’s resolution is set against Jerome’s contrary explanation.
Sometimes these conflicts are resolved decisively, but often the tension remained and prompted the reader to return to Scripture and Tradition to find a harmonious resolution.
The Glossa presents not only scholastic quaestiones disputatae, but also sustained analyses of the spiritual senses of Scripture. The compilers were intent on showing how, from the beginning, the saving work of Christ was prefigured in the work of creation. Abraham’s journey to Mount Moriah to sacrifice Isaac, Jacob’s persecution by Laban, Joseph’s betrayal and descent into an Egyptian prison, everything in the Old Testament points to Christ’s saving work.
The compilers of the Glossa were convinced that their readings were not imposed on the text but were true exegesis. In the providence of God—who is outside time—what was prior contained a figure of what came later. As Saint Paul tells the Corinthians: “Now all these things happened to them in figure: and they are written for our correction.” And as Jesus says in John’s gospel: “Abraham saw my day, and was glad.” Thus, when the Glossa says that Jacob’s twelve sons signify the apostolic number, this does not mean that Jesus chose twelve apostles because Jacob had twelve sons. Rather, Jacob had twelve sons because Jesus chose twelve apostles.
It is a well-kept secret among medievalists that the most popular and influential texts of the Middle Ages are often those least known to the modern public: Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica, Nicholas of Lyra’s Postillae, the Glossa Ordinaria, and many others. These works survive in hundreds or thousands of manuscripts and often dozens of early modern printed editions, yet remain unknown outside university graduate programs.
Thankfully, Emmaus Academic Press has now published the first translation of the Glossa Ordinaria on Genesis, presented in its medieval layout, and with future volumes forthcoming. English readers can now encounter the Bible as did medieval readers, with the harmony of Scripture and Tradition displayed in textual form.
The word glossa comes from the Greek for “tongue” or “language.” It was a common exercise in the faculties of theology and canon law for a teacher to adorn a classroom text with “glosses”—short notes to explain the literal and spiritual meanings of Scripture. Eventually, over the course of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century, a particular set of notes crystallized into “The Gloss”, as Aquinas calls it, and later “The Standard Gloss” (Glossa ordinaria).
In the twelfth century, the production of manuscript copies of the Glossa outpaced those of the biblical text by itself. In the modern era, the Glossa was printed a dozen times, the first by Adolph Rusch in 1480. Later, a team of editors at Douai undertook a new edition in 1617. Their preface begins with a rebuke against those who have a taste only for new books, who shun or ignore the authority of the Fathers. They make a bold claim: the Glossa Ordinaria is “as though the very tongue of Scripture.”
Without the guidance of the Fathers, we cannot understand Scripture. The preface thereby exhorts the reader to abandon individual interpretation of the Bible. When one reads Scripture in harmony with Tradition, then one can understand its speech.
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“Without the guidance of the Fathers, we cannot understand Scripture.”
Where does this leave those who follow Christ obediently, in whom He and THE Father make their home, who are anointed by the Holy Spirit of Truth, The LORD.
Contentious & competitive exegeses by the ‘fathers’ can be of real help BUT only towards the higher goal of being in Christ and so constantly in relationship with The Holy Trinity of GOD.
Not for nothing does Saint John chapter 10 instruct us in Christ’s strong words: “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before Me are thieves & robbers.” . . . . . . . “I know My own & My own know Me.”
Saint Paul (2 Corinthians 13:5) goes as far as to say we are counterfeits if we do not recognise Christ dwelling in our hearts. In Romans 8:9 he assures us that those who do not have The Holy Spirit are alien to Christ.
It’s great to read the debates of learned Christians of the past but if it substitutes for the lived experience of The Living God it becomes an obstacle.
Ever in the grace & mercy of King Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
We read: “As a teaching tool, it often presents a number of disputed questions, each backed with their own authorities, which welcome student and master to discuss matters further [….] Sometimes these conflicts are resolved decisively, but often the tension remained and prompted the reader to return to Scripture and Tradition to find a harmonious resolution.”
Today, about synodality, “disputed questions” and conflicting views of “backwardness”…. How about this from St. John Paul II (“Crossing the Threshold of Hope”):
“Some maintain that as far as issues of morality, and above all sexual ethics, are concerned, the Church and the Pope are not in touch with the contemporary world with its trends toward an ever greater freedom of conduct. Since the world is going in this direction, one gets the impression that the Church is moving BACKWARD [caps added] [….]
“This opinion is widespread, but I am convinced that it is quite wrong. The encyclical “Veritatis Splendor” demonstrates this, even if it does not directly address sexual ethics, but addresses rather the great threat posed to Western civilization by MORAL RELATIVISM [italics] Pope Paul VI sensed this deeply and knew that it was his duty to undertake the battle against such [“moral”] RELATIVISM [italics] for the sake of the essential good of man. With his encyclical “Humanae Vitae” he put into practice the words the Apostle Paul wrote to his disciple Timothy: “Proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient….For the time will dome when people will not tolerate sound doctrine (2 Tim 4:2-3)”.
Today, what really is ideological and “backwardist?” And, as for “tolerance,” this:
“The new evangelization has nothing in common with what various publications have insinuated when speaking of RESTORATION [italics] or when advancing the accusation of PROSELYTISM [italics], or when unilaterally or tendentiously [!] calling for PLURALISM and TOLERANCE [italics].”
Yours truly looks forward to a retracked and even retracted Synod that actually unscrambles the postmodern omelet of chaos now welcomed into the unwelcome Church. That is, like “the Gloss,” returns/advances into “Scripture AND Tradition to find a harmonious resolution.”
It it to be commended that the Glossa Ordinaria English translation is getting published. Prayers and wishes goes to and that the whole collection not just Genesis but all up to Revelation get published completely sooner rather than later. This is line with the backlash against the contemporary historical-critical method of biblical analysis led by the Pope Benedict XVI and spearheaded here in the U.S. by Scott Hahn and the scholars gathered and affiliated around him. That there is a dearth of good Catholic biblical commentaries cannot be denied. The two foremost Catholic series Sacra Pagina/Berit Olam and Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture are so heavily historical-critical such that priests and preachers often find them unrelatable and meaningful for their homily preparation. Most end up instead using books of canned homilies as references for simple contextualization and adaptation resulting in the generally formulaic (spiritualy) malnourishing bland and boring homelitic universe in the Church. As the late Pope always taught, there is so great a treasure to be mined in the patristic (and medieval) spiritual-moral (allegorical) readings of sacred scripture that can surely remedy the current historical-critical shallowness that inflict our homilies.
Not sure about your point on Benedict XVI and the historical-critical method…Benedict writes:
“One thing is clear to me: in two hundred years of exegetical work, historical-critical exegesis has already yielded its essential fruit. If scholarly exegesis is not to exhaust itself in constantly new hypotheses, becoming theologically irrelevant [!], it must take a methodological step forward and see itself once again as a theological discipline [!], without abandoning its historical character [….]” (“Jesus of Nazareth,” Foreword, 2010).
“Historical character” in the sense that Scripture is “inspired” by the Holy Spirit, but not dictated.
(As a point of interreligious interest, and in critical contrast, cultic and fundamentalist Islam regards their compiled lines and words, themselves, in the Qur’an, as “dictated” and even as “uncreated” from outside of time and history—substituting the historical Incarnation of Jesus Christ, Second Person of the eternal Trinity and “the Word made flesh,” with “the word made book.”)
Gloss has two meanings, to luster and shine, or to disguise. For example, the latter to gloss over the imperfections.
Likewise, the Glossa Ordinaria offers the Bible reader insight into the allegorical meaning, what the text signifies, of sacred scripture, St Jerome among the foremost exegetes of the Apostolic tradition. To appreciate what Klumpenhouwer proposes, that “Without the guidance of the Fathers, we cannot understand Scripture. When one reads Scripture in harmony with Tradition, then one can understand its speech”, read the works of the Fathers and what Dr Klumpenhouwer says becomes clear.
Perhaps glossing over are the imperfections inherent in most great legacies due to cultural, ethnic prejudices, religious convictions. Which is why modern exegesis also has value. Insofar as reading sacred scripture without survey of the Fathers of the Church, one would believe that scripture can be read by the novice with benefit. Certainly that’s true for the Gospels. Although Peter warns us in reading scripture [that applies in particular to the Old testament], giving the Apostle Paul as an example of complexity that can be a challenge that suggests guidance. And research, particularly of the Fathers.
Perhaps the foremost modern allegorical study of the Gospels is Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth. His opening premise is that most modern exegesis of the NT is historical, cultural comparison that largely omits the spiritual meaning signified by the text.
Benedict also perfects what’s lacking in some of the Fathers, and especially the deficiency of contemporary studies, giving us well reasoned, further spiritual insight and guidance into what the Word conveys.
I am very excited to get a copy of this book, thanks so much for the article.