The Song of Songs on the Feast of the Virgin’s Nativity

Before the Tridentine reform, very few feasts had Scriptural readings in the first nocturn of the Divine Office. On Saints’ days, it was typical for readings of their lives to supply all the Matins lessons, while on those of Our Lord and Our Lady, the first two nocturns were usually taken up with a sermon about the feast, and the third by a homily on the Gospel read at Mass. There were, however, certain exceptions to this, such as Christmas and Epiphany, which always had the same readings from Isaiah that they do today. Among the feasts of the Virgin Mary, only that of her Nativity had Scriptural readings; these were taken from the Song of Songs, or Canticle of Canticles, as it was traditionally known in the Latin West, from its title in the Vulgate, “Canticum Canticorum.”

Two pages of a breviary according to the Use of Prague, printed in 1502, with the Office of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary; the Canticle of Canticles is read in both the first and second nocturns. In many Bibles of this period, the Canticle also had notes added to the text to indicate who is speaking, as explained below: these were often incorporated into breviaries as well, as seen here. (Click image to enlarge.)

When the Birth of the Virgin was given an octave in the mid-13th century, readings from the Canticle were supplied for the days within it, but in the Tridentine reform, this arrangement was transferred to the Assumption. Readings from the Canticle were retained for September 8th and 15th, but in the reform of St Pius X, the latter date became the feast of the Seven Sorrows, which has readings from the Lamentations instead. After making the solemn dogmatic definition of the Assumption in 1950, Pius XII promulgated a new Office for it which has Genesis and First Corinthians in the first nocturn, so the custom is now retained only in its original place.

Pope St Gregory the Great (busily writing a Biblical commentary in cope and tiara, as one does), ca. 1370, by the Bohemian painter known as Master Theodoric, active in Prague ca. 1360-80.

The Canticle is, of course, one of the most difficult books of the Bible to interpret. Writing in the mid-3rd century, the great Biblical scholar Origen begins his commentary on it by noting that among the Jews, it is one of the parts of Scripture which the young are not allowed to read, and is “reserved for study till the last.” St Gregory of Nyssa (335-95 ca.), who, like the other Cappadocian Fathers, was greatly influenced by Origen, refers to it repeatedly as a mystery: “Through the title ‘Song of Songs’, the noble text also promises to teach us the mystery of mysteries.” In the West, St Gregory the Great’s commentary became the standard work on the subject; he begins his prologue by stating that “through certain aenigmata, the divine Word speaks to the cold and languid soul, and from the things which it knows, insinuates to it in a hidden way that love which it knows not.” The word aenigmata (the plural of aenigma) means “things which are enigmatical or dark in a figurative representation; allegories; things which are obscure or inexplicable; riddles, enigmas, obscurities, mysteries.” It entered the Latin language from Greek partly through the Vulgate version of 1 Corinthians 13, 12, a verse which the King James Version renders with one its most intriguing and often-used turns of phrase, “We see now through a glass darkly.”

The beginning of the Song of Songs in Bible printed at Strassbourg in 1481, with the Glossa Ordinaria and other commentary material printed in any around it, as was commonly done in that era. (There is a another “glossa ordinaria” for the law code of Justinian, which was produced by scholars at the University of Bologna at the same time as the Biblical one.)   

In the early 12th century, a group of scholars associated with the cathedral school of Laon in France put together a collection of glosses on the text of the whole Bible. This became one of the standard text books for the rest of the Middle Ages and beyond, and was therefore known as the “Glossa Ordinaria”. In its section on the Canticle of Canticles, many of the glosses explain certain verses by the speaker; for example, the opening words “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth” is explained as “The voice of those who lived before the coming of Christ, who pray to the father of the bridegroom, who is Christ.”

Since the Canticle was regarded as an especially difficult text, many early printed Bibles contain a series of very brief notes interpolated into the text of it, which are derived from the Glossa Ordinaria, or one of the other works of Biblical interpretation that were commonly read in the Middle Ages, the Postillae of Hugh of St Cher, and the commentary of the Franciscan Nicholas of Lyra.

Here, then, is the text of the first chapter of the Canticle of Canticles, with the notes as printed in the Bible shown above.

The beginning of the Song of Songs, with the glosses in red, from a Latin Bible printed at Nuremberg in 1516. (The rest of the book is seen below; the type is small enough that the whole book fits into two pages.) 

The voice of the one who longs for the coming of Christ. Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth: for thy breasts are better than wine, ₂ smelling sweet of the best ointments. The voice of the Church to Christ. Thy name is as oil poured out: therefore young maidens have loved thee. ₃ Draw me: we will run after thee to the odour of thy ointments. The voice of the bride to the young women. The king hath brought me into his storerooms: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, remembering thy breasts more than wine: the righteous love thee. The Church (speaking) about its sufferings ₄ I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon. ₅ Do not consider me that I am brown, because the sun hath altered my colour: the sons of my mother have fought against me, they have made me the keeper in the vineyards: my vineyard I have not kept. The voice of the Church to Christ. ₆ Shew me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou liest in the midday, lest I begin to wander after the flocks of thy companions. The voice of Christ to the Church. ₇ If thou know not thyself, O fairest among women, go forth, and follow after the steps of the flocks, and feed thy kids beside the tents of the shepherds. ₈ To my company of horsemen, in Pharao's chariots, have I likened thee, O my love. ₉ Thy cheeks are beautiful as the turtledove's, thy neck as jewels. The voice of the friends (of the bridegroom). ₁₀ We will make thee chains of gold, inlaid with silver. The voice of the Church (speaking) about Christ. ₁₁ While the king was at his repose, my spikenard sent forth the odour thereof. ₁₂ A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, he shall abide between my breasts. ₁₃ A cluster of cypress my love is to me, in the vineyards of Engaddi. The voice of Christ. ₁₄ Behold thou art fair, O my love, behold thou art fair, thy eyes are as those of doves. The voice of the Church. ₁₅ Behold thou art fair, my beloved, and comely. Our bed is flourishing. ₁₆ The beams of our houses are of cedar, our rafters of cypress trees.