“This Book Is Called a Garden Enclosed”

The Psalms were the poetic lifeblood of medieval civilization.

Sunday’s post explored the nature of poetic literature, Plato’s philosophy of poetry, and the centrality of the Psalms in medieval life and thought. We need to continue this discussion by looking more deeply into the Psalter’s poetic qualities and its intimate relationship with medieval spirituality.

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In the previous essay I suggested, following Chesterton, that poetry is the first language of the soul: “We should all like to speak poetry at the moment when we truly live,” Chesterton says, “and if we do not speak it, it is because we have an impediment in our speech.”

The Book of Genesis tells the story of two people who had no such impediments. In their prelapsarian paradise they knew nothing of sin, disease, fear, or strife. Their bodies and spirits were so radiant with divine light that to the ancient Greeks they would have seemed more like gods than human beings. If poetry is the soul’s natural mode of expression, would not Adam and Eve—still possessing such perfect wholeness that their speech moved like a prima ballerina upon the stage of thought—have spoken in verse?

How they were wont to converse, we cannot know. Genesis tells us almost nothing of what the happy couple said before they traded bliss and immortality for one delicious moment of disobedience. But there is something that we do know, and let us never forget it: the first recorded words of the human race, spoken in paradise by a being with body and soul still united in sublime harmony, were written in the Book of Genesis as verse—an affectionate little poem, such as might arise in a man’s heart when first he looks at a woman, and loves her.

And the Lord God made a woman from the rib which he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man, and the man said,
    “This one, at last, is bone of my bones
        and flesh of my flesh;
    she shall be called ‘woman,’
        for from man she was taken.”

It is a little-known fact that approximately one-third of the Old Testament is poetry—not just poetical prose, but formal Hebrew poetry, written in (non-metrical) verse and distinguished by elevated vocabulary, intensified syntax, and artistic modes of expression.

Thus, the Psalms are not the only poems in the Old Testament, but they were, in the Middle Ages, the most widely read, the most fervently admired, and the most fundamental to religious experience. This was due in large part to the activity of the monasteries. The influence of monastic life in medieval culture and spirituality was immense, and the food that sustained monastic life was the Psalter. Saint Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism, referred to the divine office—a rule of daily prayer composed primarily of Psalms—as the “work of God”:

We believe that the divine presence is everywhere…. But we should believe this especially and without any doubt when we assist at the Work of God…. Let us therefore consider how we ought to conduct ourselves in the sight of the Godhead and of His Angels, and let us take part in the psalmody in such a way that our mind may be in harmony with our voice.

Psalmic poetry is not the smooth, rhyming verse that we see in much of the English poetic tradition. It has a texture like sculpted sandstone, and stays close to the earth—meadows and trees, fields and streams, paths and snares, storms and deep waters. Its metaphors are bold, its imagery visceral, its language pointed like a spear and keen like a blade. Continual parallelism gives it mysterious resonance, vehement passions drive it deep into the soul, and all is interwoven with moments of unforgettable tenderness and extraordinary psychological depth.

From beginning to end the Psalter surrounds the reader with the presence of God, the magnificence of His deeds, and the greatness of His merciful love, which gives man hope amidst the endless perils of life. The monks breathed psalmic poetry as spiritual air, day and night, week after week, year after year, until at last the hour of the soul had come, and the song of the body was silenced.

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Let’s recall what I observed in the previous post about the theory of poetry in Plato’s dialogue Ion: poetic speech seems analogous to a tornado, with divine power descending from the realm of the gods like mighty winds and converging with psychological fury on the poet, who is then “inspired” or “possessed” and draws his listeners into poetry’s storm of emotional and imaginative energies.

This imagery helps us understand medieval poetry by way of contrast, for the psalmody of the Middle Ages was verse that gathered strength upon the earth and rose upward as a torrent of praise and supplication to the eternal throne of God. Monasteries, cathedrals, royal chapels, and parish churches resounded with the sacred words of the Psalms; scholars and mystics studied and savored them; cherished prayer books illuminated them; humble homes rejoiced with them; and the weary hearts of believers everywhere depended upon them.

Plato wrote that “poets by a divine inspiration interpret the things of the gods to us,” and the medieval experience of psalmic poetry was likewise rooted in the mystical knowledge and inspiring power of the Almighty. The Psalms are still admired as superb poems even by secular estimation, but for medieval Christians, they were the ultimate literary collaboration between heaven and earth. Their value far surpassed that of any human art, for they were a collection of narrative, dramatic, and lyrical songs breathed into the minds of the Hebrew poets by God Himself—eternal Wisdom, divine Artist, perfect Beauty. The Psalter was gratitude in good times and strength in hard times; it was comfort in sorrow and exultation in joy; and it was an enchanting synthesis of salvation history, bringing mysteries and truths and epic events of the Bible to vast numbers of ordinary folk who could read the poems or learn them by heart.

A fourteenth-century mystic named Richard Rolle translated the Latin Psalter into Middle English. Seven centuries later, here I am translating his meditative prologue to this book into modern English,¹ and sharing it with others who may, like me, wish to experience the Psalms—and poetry in general—more like the Christians of the Middle Ages did:

“Great abundance of spiritual comfort and joy in God comes in the hearts of them that say or sing devoutly the psalms in loving of Jesu Christ. They drop sweetness in man’s soul and bring secret delight to his thoughts and kindle his will with the fire of love, making him hot and burning within, and fair and lovely in the eyes of Christ.... Truly this shining book is a chosen song before God.... In it is so much loveliness of understanding and medicine of words that this book is called a garden enclosed and well sealed, a paradise full of all fruits.”

1. Here is the original text if you want to try your hand at the Middle English: “Grete haboundance of gastly comfort and ioy in god comes in the hertes of thaim at says or synges deuotly the psalmes in louynge of ihū crist. thai drope swetnes in mannys saule and hellis delite in thaire thoghtis and kyndils thaire willes with the fyre of luf; makand thaim hate. and brennand withinen. & faire and lufly in cristis eghen…. Sothly this shynand boke is a chosen sange byfor god…. In thaim is so mykill fayrhed of vndirstandynge. & medicyne of wordes. that this boke is cald garthen closed, wel enseled. paradyse ful of all appils.”