When Numbers Were Poetry

Numerical symbolism in medieval culture

In a recent Substack post,

Peter Kwasniewski

examined, with his usual cogency and scholarly rigor, the two different numbering systems used in the Book of Psalms. His article will be of interest to those who enjoy studying or praying the Psalms, and also those who have a general interest in Bible translations and the English-language biblical tradition. However, there is more at stake in that topic than the numbering systems themselves, and you’ll find that the article branches out into themes—fidelity to inherited customs, respect for the ancient past, cultural wholeness—that also inform the work that we do at Via Mediaevalis.

I had the opportunity to discuss this article with Dr. Kwasniewski before it was published, and one question that I ended up pondering was, Why are the Psalms so rarely numbered in medieval prayer books? For example:

This is the beginning of a “Penitential Psalms” section—it has a fine illustration, but no number indicating which Psalm is about to be prayed.

This next example has no title and no number but does offer the reader some deeply mystifying decorations:

Sometimes the beginning of a Psalm was marked by a label or section title written in red ink, but the number of the Psalm is nowhere to be found:

In that last example, which by the way has a beautiful and delightfully legible script, a rather extensive red-ink title states “[here] begin the seven penitential psalms,” and the first Psalm in the sequence is marked with “Psalmus,” but still there is no number!

Why were medieval “publishers,” and presumably medieval readers as well, so decidedly uninterested in Psalm numbers? Were the numbers really so utterly superfluous? Would they not at least have been useful enough to justify a few more drops of red ink?

I don’t think anyone has a complete and definitive answer to these questions, but it occurred to me that we have a partial explanation in the very nature of medieval numbers. And this brings us back to our ongoing discussion—make sure to read the previous post, if you haven’t already—about symbolism.

The absence of Psalm numbers in prayer books was, I think, a reflection of numerical culture in the Middle Ages. In a world that taught Latin grammar as the foundation of the intellectual life, did not rely upon mathematically precise technology, and held a large portion of its wealth in the form of land and treasure, numbers were not seen as a solution to life’s problems. Most people didn’t think in highly mathematical ways, and as one author observed, many medieval folks seemed to be “poor at counting.” If you think that modern statistics are unreliable, try reading the descriptive account that Guillebert de Metz—an educated man—wrote about fifteenth-century Paris. Somehow he ascertained that Paris had “more than four thousand wine shops, more than eighty thousand beggars, and more than sixteen thousand scribes”—at a time when the city’s entire population was about one hundred thousand.

However, if numbers were of little importance as arithmetic tools, they nonetheless carried great significance in the medieval mind. Numbers were valued for their symbolism, and returning now to the question of prayer books, we could propose that since the numbers attached to the Psalms were non-symbolic in nature, they were viewed as expendable. Why clutter the page with numerals that serve merely to identify Psalms, when readers could more easily identify them by memorizing the first few words? And why do anything to encourage the sort of inelegant announcements that characterize modern religious gatherings? If a medieval community repaired to the village church to implore God’s mercy, there was no need for the priest to say, “Let us all now open our prayer books and recite Psalm Fifty, on page twenty-seven.” The Psalms were not numbered, and actually, neither were the pages—despite the extraordinary diligence, patience, and attention to detail that they brought to their task, the scholars and artists who wrote and decorated medieval manuscripts didn’t bother to include page numbers.

So instead of announcements, the priest just started singing:

Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.

And the people joined their voices to his, as naturally as breathing out follows breathing in:

Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam.

Within three days come hundreds thousands four,
in Sarraguce sound the drums of war.

I’ll strike one thousand seven hundred blows,
and Durendal all bleeding shall you see.

The rearguard with those dozen companions,
they will not fail to join the battle.

By his great power, there in Spain,
the Emperor seven years remained.

These excerpts, from a medieval French epic called the Song of Roland, give us a feeling for the role of numbers in medieval thought. Clearly, mathematical precision is not the intention. What we see instead are approximations involving numbers—such as three, seven, twelve, one thousand—that are highly charged with symbolic meaning.

Ann Haskell, who taught medieval literature for many years at SUNY Buffalo, wrote a lovely summary of medieval number symbolism, which was complex enough to resemble a form of “sacred mathematics”:

The order of the natural world was observable proof of the existence of God, and numbers, the key to that order, inspired awe. There were traditional meanings for the numbers, well known and, in some instances, still in use today. But there were also believed to be secrets hidden in numbers which could be revealed only if one were diligent, faithful, or … inventive enough to unlock them.

Numbers “inspired awe”: I love that. I’ve taught math classes before—trigonometry, statistics, calculus—and nowhere in those curricula do we find this sense of wonder. The modern approach might teach students to look with awe upon the things that we do or make using numbers—in other words, scientific discoveries and technological achievements. But in the medieval worldview, the numbers themselves were awe-inspiring, because they were seen not as mere tools but as poetic manifestations of religious and cosmic realities that permeated the material universe and originated ultimately in the mind of Almighty God.

Let’s look at a few of the symbolic meanings attached to medieval numbers, which as you will see, were thoroughly interwoven with the events and doctrines of Christianity:

• one: unity (everything is united in the divine oneness of God)

• two: the Incarnation (the two natures, divine and human, of Christ)

• three: the divine realm, divine perfection (the Holy Trinity)

• four: the material realm (the four winds, the four classical elements)

• five: sacrifice (the five wounds of Christ)

• six: imperfection, because it’s not quite seven (this number, which was associated with the six days of Creation, can also have the opposite meaning, i.e., perfection—see the comments section below for further discussion on the number six and on the complexity of medieval number symbolism in general)

• seven: perfection (seven planets, seven days of Creation, seven tones of the musical scale)

• eight: regeneration (the Resurrection of Christ was the “eighth day” that brought ultimate fulfillment and renewal to the seven days of Creation)

• ten: completion (the Ten Commandments)

• forty: penance (Lent, Christ in the wilderness)

An especially fascinating aspect of medieval number symbolism is the way that both numbers and their symbolic meanings are subject to the laws of arithmetic:

• Seven is perfection because it is the sum of three (the divine realm) and four (the material realm); it can also symbolize mankind, since human nature is the “sum” of soul (three) and body (four).

• Five represented incorruptibility and eternity because, as Professor Vincent Hopper¹ explained, it “reproduces itself in its last digit when raised to its powers.”

• Nine, associated with mystery and the nine choirs of angels, is three times three and therefore had strong Trinitarian significance.

• Twelve is the “universal number,” not only because there were twelve Apostles and twelve tribes of Israel, but also because three times four—i.e., spirit times matter—equals twelve.

This is but a small sampling of the extensive and intricate poetry that medieval thinkers derived from things as seemingly prosaic as counting and arithmetic. We can only marvel at their desire to see numbers and numerical relationships as a coherent philosophical system, a facet of the spiritual life, and a pathway into the most profound and mystical realities of God’s wisdom, power, and love. We will conclude with an excerpt from The Book of the Lover and the Beloved, by Ramon Llull (d. 1315):

In the numbers one and three the Lover found greater harmony than between any others, because by these numbers every bodily form passed to existence from non-existence. And the greatest harmony of number, the Lover thought, was in the Unity and the Trinity of his Beloved.

1. Vincent Foster Hopper (d. 1976), a leading expert in this field, wrote Medieval Number Symbolism: Its Sources, Meaning, and Influence on Thought and Expression.