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… novo sensu sacram adulterare Scripturam: Clement VI and the Political use of the Bible

1985; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 4; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0143045900003653

2632-9913

Diana Wood,

Medieval Literature and History

Medieval biblical commentators traditionally interpreted the Bible in terms of the ‘four senses’ of Scripture—the literal-historical and the three ‘spiritual’ senses, the allegorical, the tropological or moral, and the anagogical. Recently attention has been focused on the use of a variation of the allegorical sense, namely, political allegory. This was the application of a biblical text to a current political situation or argument. The Roman revolutionary Cola di Rienzo, after hearing Pope Clement VI preach in consistory, gave it another name altogether— sensum adulterum . Clement had apparently delivered the customary papal allegorization of the two-swords passage ( Luke , xix. 38), according to which both swords, that of spiritual authority and of physical power, were in the hands of the priesthood.