Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/58

Augustine's interpretation of the story of David and Bathsheba was embodied verbatim in a work upon the Old Testament by Isidore of Seville.^[1] The voluminous commentator Rabanus Maurus took the same, also verbatim, either from Isidore or Augustine.^[2] His pupil, Walafrid Strabo, in his famous Glossa ordinaria, cited, probably from Rabanus, the first part of the passage as far as the reference to the well of living water from John's Gospel. He abridged the matter somewhat, thus showing the smoothing compiler's art which was to bring his Glossa ordinaria into such general use. Walafrid omitted the lines declaring that Uriah signified the devil. He did cite, however, again probably from Rabanus, part of a long passage, taken by Rabanus from Gregory the Great, where Bathsheba is declared to be the letter of the Law, united to a carnal people, which David (Christ) joins to himself in a spiritual sense. Uriah is that carnal people, to wit, the Jews.^[3]

Thus far as to the comments on the narrative from the eleventh chapter of the Second Book of Samuel, otherwise called the Second Book of Kings. When Rabanus came to explain the sixth verse of the first chapter of Matthew—"And David begat Solomon from her who was the wife of Uriah"—he said: "Uriah indeed, that is interpreted 'My light of God,' signifies the devil, who fashions himself into an angel of light, daring to say to God: 'My light of God,' and 'I will be like unto the Most High' (Isaiah xiv.)."^[4] Here pupil Walafrid follows his master, but adds: "Whose bewedded Church Christ became enamoured of from the terrace of His paternal majesty and joined her, made beautiful, to himself in matrimony."^[5]

With Rabanus and Walafrid, as with Isidore and the Venerable Bede who were the links between these Carolingians

against Faustus, finds Bathsheba to signify the " congregatio nationum quae non erat Christo legitimo quodam fidei copulata connubio."

1. Quaestiones in Vet. Testam. in Regum II. (Migne 83, col. 411). Isidore died A.D. 636 (ante, Chapter V.)
2. Comment, in Libras IV. Regum, in lib. ii. cap. xi.; Migne, Pat. Lat. 109, col. 98 (written in 834). On Rabanus and Walafrid see ante, Chapter X.
3. Glossa ordinaria, Lib. Regum, ii. cap. xi. (Migne 113, col. 571, 572)
4. Comment, in Matthaeum (Migne 107, col. 734).
5. Migne 114, col. 67.