‘Atlas, whose pine-wreathed head is always encircled by black clouds,’ for these are animate, mons ‘mountain,’ to which human members are attributed, is not alive—from the inanimate to the animate, as si tantum pectore robur concipis (Aeneid 11.368) ‘if in your heart you nourish such strength,’ since robur ‘strength’ is not alive; likewise also Turnus, to whom these things are said, is a living being” (Trans. Jim Marchand, online at http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/texts/donatus.3.english.html).

“Allegoria est tropus, quo aliud significatur quam dicitur, ut et iam tempus equum fumantia soluere colla, hoc est ‘carmen finire’… Aenigma est obscura sententia per occultam similitudinem rerum, ut mater me genuit, eadem mox gignitur ex me, cum significet aquam in glaciem concrescere et ex eadem rursus effluere” (“Allegory is a trope, in which one signifies something different from what one says, as in “and now it is time to unyoke the necks of our smoking steeds” (Virgil, Georgics, II, 542), in other words, to finish the poem. An enigma (or riddle) is a proposition that is obscure because of a secret resemblance between things, such as ‘my mother gave birth to me and she will soon be born out of me,’ which means that water is changed into ice and then will flow once again from the ice”) (Ars maior III, 6, ed. Holtz, pp. 671–672).

The Virgilian simile is from Aeneid, I, 589.

The idea probably comes from Demetrius Phalereus (On Style, 79): not all metaphors are interchangeable: the auriga may be called gubernator and vice versa, but, though we may call the lower slopes of the mountain the foot of Mount Ida we cannot call human feet slopes.

Ab inanimali ad inanimal, ut Zachariae undecimo: Aperi, Libane, portas tuas. Item psalmo VIII: Qui perambulat semitas maris. Translatio est enim a civitate ad montem, et a terra ad mare, quorum nullum animam habet. Ab animali ad inanimal, ut, Amos I: Exsiccatus est vertex Carmeli. Homines enim, non montes, verticem habent. 4, Ab inanimali ad animal, ut, Ezech. XI: Auferam a vobis cor lapideum. Non enim lapis, sed populus animam habet (PL 90, 179D–180B). “From inanimate to inanimate, as in Zechariah 11, 1: ‘Open thy doors, O Lebanon.’ And likewise in Psalms 8, 8: ‘whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.’ In fact the metaphor is from the city to the mountain and from the land to the sea, and neither of these things is animate. From animate to inanimate, as in Amos 1, 2: ‘and the [head] of Carmel shall wither.’ In fact, men have heads, not mountains. From inanimate to animate, as in Ezekiel 11, 19: ‘I will take the stony heart out of [your] flesh.’ In fact, the stone is not animate, but people have a soul”. Examples follow of transferrals to birds, beasts, and so on.

The Latin quote is from Cicero 1954, p. 345.

“Undecumque licet ducere translationes? Nequaquam, sed tantum de honestis rebus. Nam summopere fugienda est omnis turpitudo earum rerum, ad quas eorum animos qui audiunt trahet similitudo, ut dictum est morte Africani castratam rem publicam et stercus curiae: in utroque deformis cogitatio similitudinis” (“Are we free to make metaphors out of anything we choose? Not at all, only from decent things. In fact we must avoid at all costs any vulgarity in the things to which the simile draws the attention of one’s listeners, as when someone said ‘The republic was castrated by the death of Scipio Africanus’ or the expression ‘the dung of the senate’; in both cases the conception of the comparison is dishonorable”) (Halm 1863: 38).

See McGarry 1955, p. 56.

For the citations from Matthew of Vendôme, Geoffrey of Vinsauf and John of Garland, see Faral (1924).

“Considerandum est verbum, quod debet transferri, de quibus dicatur proprie; et, si ad aliam rem debeat transferri, cavendum est ut in ea proprietate sit similitudo. Sic autem debet inveniri similitudo: perscrutandum est in illo verbo quiddam commune, quod pluribus conveniat quam illud verbum; et quibuscumque aliis commune conveniat proprie, conveniet illud verbum traslative” (“You have to consider what the word to be used metaphorically can appropriately be used for; and if it is to be used metaphorically for something else, you must make sure that the comparison fits with its proper use. The comparison is to be found in the following way: one must seek carefully in that word something in common, something that fits other things in addition to that word ; and whatever other thing what they have in common is suited to, that word will also be suited metaphorically”) (Faral: 286).

“For if you now put this property of the smiling of the meadows together with its antecedents, concomitants and consequences, you will generate so many witty propositions and enthymemes that the fields themselves in springtime do not produce so many flowers. I call antecedents the causes of this metaphorical Smile: that is, the return of the sun from the hibernal tropic to the sign of Aries. The wafting of Zephyr fecundator of the earth. The warm Austral winds. The rains of Springtime. The retreat of the snows. The autumn seedtime. Thus you will say: Amico SOLI arridentia prata reditum gratulantur. Vis scire cur prata rideant?… Suavissimis Austri delibuta suauys, subrident prata.Dubitas cur prata rideant? Imbribus ebria sunt” (“The laughing meadows salute their friend the sun on his return. Do you want to know why the meadows are smiling?… Smothered with the cloying kisses of the Auster wind, the meadows smile. Do you not know why the meadows smile. They are drunk with the rains”).

Pépin (1958, 1970) and Auerbach (1944) have demonstrated with a wealth of examples that the classical world, too, understood “symbol” and “allegory” as synonyms, just as their patristic and medieval exegetes did. The examples, in which the term “symbol” is also used for those didactic and conceptualizing representations that in another context will be called “allegories,” range from Philo to grammarians like Demetrius, from Clement of Alexandria to Hippolytus of Rome, from Porphyry to the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, from Plotinus to Iamblichus.

We encounter various formulations of this maxim, as a definition of trope or allegory, in Cicero (De oratore, 3.41.166): ut aliud dicatur, aliud intelligendum sit (“so that one thing may be expressed and another understood”); Donato (Ars maior III, 6), Ambrose (De Abraham libri duo, I, 4, 28): Allegoria est cum aliud geritur et aliud figuratur (“We have allegory when one thing is presented and we imagine another”); Augustine (Sermo 272): Ista, fratres, ideo dicuntur sacramenta, quia in eis aliud uidetur, aliud intelligitur (“These things, brethren, are therefore called sacraments, because in them one thing appears and something else is intended”); Cassiodorus (Expositio Psalmorum, VII. 1,80): schema quod dicitur allegoria, id est inversio, aliud dicens, aliud significans (“The figure called allegory, that is, inversion, says one thing and means another”); Bede (De schematibus et tropis, II.2.12): Allegoria est tropus quo aliud significatur quam dicitur (“Allegory is a figure that signifies something different from what it says”); and Isidore (Etymologiae I.37.22): Allegoria est alieniloquium. Aliud enim sonat, et alius intelligitur (“Allegory is other-speech, because it says something literally and something else is understood”).

“Every created thing in the world is like a book or a painting or a mirror to us. A faithful image of our life, of our death, of our state, of our fate. The rose depicts our state, and on our state provides a fitting commentary, a teaching for our lives. Though it blossoms in the early morning, it fades a petalless flower in the old age of evening. Thus the flower expires respiring, while it withers pale and wilting, dying as it is born. At once a dotard and a damsel, at once a maiden and an ancient, the rose is rotting as it rises. So the springtime of mankind blossoms briefly in the early morning of our youth.”

Cf. De Lubac 1959–64, Compagnon 1979, Bori 1987, and, on the twelfth century, Valente 1995.

On Augustine’s semiotics, see Manetti 1987, chap. 10, and Vecchio 1994.

See, for instance, Jerome (In Matt. XXI.5) cum historia vel impossibilitatem habeat vel turpitudinem, ad altiora transmittimur (“When the story speaks of impossible things or turpitudes, we are being directed toward higher things”); or Origen (De Principiis, 4.2.9, and 4.3.4), according to whom the Holy Spirit interpolates into the text superfluous little details as a clue to its prophetic nature.

See too Epistola 102.33: sicut humana consuetudo verbis, ita divina potentia etiam factis loquitur (“Just as it is the custom of human beings to express themselves in words, so the divine power expresses itself in actions”).

On the use of myths in twelfth-century philosophy (by William of Conches, Abelard, Hildegard of Bingen, and others), cf. Dronke 1974, who in his first chapter points to a series of keywords connected with symbolism (or allegorism), such as aenigma, fabula, figura, imago, integumentum, involucrum, mysterium, similitudo, symbolum, and translatio.

“Expositio tria continet, litteram, sensum, sententiam. Littera est congrua ordinatio dictionum, quod etiam constructionem vocamus. Sensus est facilis quaedam et aperta significatio, quam littera prima fronte praefert. Sententia est profundior intelligentia, quae nisi expositione vel interpretatione non invenitur. In his ordo est, ut primum littera, deinde sensus, deinde sententia inquiratur. Quo facto, perfecta est expositio” (“Exposition involves three things: the letter, the sense and the inner meaning. The letter is the congruous arrangement of words, which we also call construction. The sense is a certain plain and straightforward meaning that the letter presents on the surface. The inner meaning (sententia) is the deeper understanding that can be discovered only through interpretation and commentary. Among these the order is: first the letter, then the sense and lastly the inner meaning. And when this is done, the exposition is complete”) (III, 8).

“De parabolico intellectu dicendum