Job in the Medieval World

Vicchio

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN: 9781498276566
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In this second of a three-volume work, Vicchio addresses the Job traditions as interpreted in the period of the Middle Ages--in Jewish, Christian and Islamic sources. From the Vulgate to the Qur'an, from Maimonides to Calvin, Vicchio addresses the complexities of the "reception history" of intriguing work. Two appendices address how Job has been treated throughout history in literature, in drama, and in medicine. Volume 1: Job in the Ancient World Volume 2: Job in the Medieval World Volume 3: Job in the Modern World

Appendix C: Job in Literature and Drama

Since it is eventful casting into the pool of Hebrew and Christian thought, the book of Job has made itself felt in ever widening circles of influence. Few are the western nations whose literature does not somewhere bear its mark.

—Nancy A. Francisco

“Job in World Literature”

The abundance of its literary forms and of its moods and its thoughts defies any classification . . . It is not exclusively a lyric poem, nor a didactic, or a reflective; it is all . . . It leaps the boundaries of them all to dwell in a place by itself, secure in its peculiar and unparalleled genius.

—Mary Ellen Chase

The Bible and the Common Reader

Introduction

In this appendix, we take a look at the uses western literature have given to the biblical book of Job. In the first section of the appendix, we look at the figure of Job in Literature before the Renaissance. For the most part, these writers depicted the patriarch as the Patient, long-suffering Job, in much the same way that medieval Christian artists did. By the Renaissance and the Reformation, interest in the literary quality and uses of the biblical book of Job shifted to the supposed hexametric structure of the book. Literary depictions of the man from Uz were often poetic, dramatic paraphrases of the biblical book.

The Enlightenment, as we shall see, had very little interest in the literary uses of the book of Job. What few literary works there are extant of Job dealt principally with, as the biblical book did, with the problem of evil. For the most part, eighteenth-century depictions of Job were dedicated to the teleological Divine Plan answer to the problem. The eighteenth century also saw the continuation of the seventeenth-century metered paraphrases.

The Romantic period saw a renewed interest in the biblical book of Job, but it was mostly the Iconoclastic/Angry Job that interested Herder, Goethe, Victor Hugo and others. The Romantics, in Germany, France, and England, saw Job as a Romantic figure, full of emotion and passion. The second half of the nineteenth century saw the first literary depictions of both sides of the man from Uz: the Patient Job, and the Angry Job.

The twentieth century saw the emergence of the first Existential Jobs and Post Holocaust Jobs. Most of these literary uses in the twentieth century are either dramas or novels. Among twentieth-century dramatists and novelists who have used Job as a central character are Thornton Wilder, Archibald MacLeish, Robert Frost, I. A. Richards, and Hanoch Levin. As we shall see, most of these writers display Job as an Angry/Iconoclastic figure, a post-Holocaust Job. Rather than seeing the man from Uz as a Patient figure, the twentieth century and beyond displays Job as a wanderer, and inquirer into the meaning of suffering, as well as God’s relationship to humans. Indeed, one curious difference between late-twentieth-century uses of Job and the history of Christian interpreters, is that the latter assumes the existence of God, while the former does not.

General scholarly treatment of the figure of Job in western literature can be found in Margaret Allen’s The Book of Job in Middle English Literature (1970); Besserman’s The Legend of the Job in the Middle Ages (1979); Mark Bochet’s “The Book of Job in Literature,” written in 1983; Rupert Boeswald’s short treatment, “Hiob in Moderner Dictung,” published in 1976; Karl Heinz Glutsch’s 1972 dissertation; Adelheid Hausen’s Hiob in der fransoesiscen Literature, published in 1972; Hector MacLean’s article, “The Job Drama in Modern Germany,” published in 1954 in the Journal of Australian Universal Modern Language Association; and Renate Usmiana’s “A New Look at the Drama of Job,” which appeared in a 1970 number of Modern Drama.1

Literature on Job in the Medieval Period

In the medieval period, a number of works based on the book of Job survive in Latin literature. Most of this literature is thoroughly discussed in Lawrence Besserman’s works, “The Story of Job: A Survey of its Literary History,” and The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages. Most medieval literature on the book of Job in the Christian tradition is written in Latin. Among the works discussed by Besserman are: Cynewulf’s Ascension and the Phoenix (eighth or ninth centuries); Aelfric of Eynsham’s Homily on the Book of Job (late tenth century); Rabanus Maurus’ De Universo, a tenth-century drama; and commentaries by Philip the Presbyter, Milo of St. Amand, Wandabert of Frum, Walafrid of Strabo, and Odo of Cluny.

Later medieval literature in English include: Pety Job, Lessons of the Dirge (early fifteenth century), a fifteenth-century Middle English Paraphrase of Job; Life of Job, a fifteenth-century English poem; La Patience of Job, a late-fifteenth-century French poem; and the Job passage in the “Clerk’s Tale,” of Beowulf. Indeed, Margaret Goldsmith argues that the biblical book of Job was one of the principal sources for Beowulf (see note 1).

What all these medieval Christian works have in common is that the Job being discussed, paraphrased, or turned into a drama is the patient, saintly Job of the prose. The Job of the poetry, the iconoclastic, angry patriarch who argues with his friends is nowhere to be found. The Jobus Christi image, as well as the Job the Warrior/Wrestler are also popular in this medieval literature.

Other Job Literature before the Renaissance

Prior to the sixteenth century, the church and synagogue produced a number of other literary works inspired by the book of Job. We have written at length about the Testament of Job, the first literary text inspired by the biblical book. From the time of the Testament (second century BCE to first century CE) to the beginning of the Renaissance most of the texts devoted to Job, in both the Jewish and Christian traditions, tended to be in the forms of commentaries, sermons and midrashim. Still a good number of literary renderings of Job are extant from this period.

In the twelfth century, Peter Riga’s Aurora retells the story of Job in 576 Latin hexameters. Another twelfth-century literary rendering of Job was Peter Blois’ Compendium in Job, composed in prose sometime in the middle of the century. Translated a century later into French by an unknown scholar as L’ Hystore Job, the French work was quite popular throughout the late Middle Ages, appearing in the libraries of a significant number of medieval monasteries.2

The thirteenth century brought the first novel to make substantial use of the Job story. Hartmann von Aue’s Der Arme Heinrich, was written sometime after 1200 and before 1220. In the book, von Aue compares his hero, a young nobleman suffering from leprosy, to the travails of the man from Uz.3

Der Arme Heinrich is a tale of womanly devotion. A poor maid offers herself as a sacrifice so that her master, who is smitten with leprosy, may be healed. At the final moment the Lord refuses the sacrifice and the master is miraculously healed, and the maid becomes the master’s wife. It appears that Hartmann used a written source for the tale, probably a Latin chronicle most critics argue. But nowhere in the literature has an exegete suggested that the source of the story is the biblical book of Job, which seems far more likely.4

Dante mentions Job in De Monarchia as the author of the biblical book, and thus the man from Uz, at least in the mind of the Italian poet, had the status of a mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit. The words of Job 11:7 also are quoted by Dante in Questio de Aqua et Terra. It is clear that Dante had a good working knowledge of the book, although Job does not appear in the Divine Comedy.5

Several fourteenth-century allusions to the book of Job appear in the Gesta Romanorum, a Latin collection of anecdotes and tales...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 11: Job in Jerome’s Vulgate
• Chapter 12: Job in Gregory the Great’s Moralia
• Chapter 13: Job in Medieval Christian Liturgy
• Chapter 14: Job in the Quran and Later Islam
• Chapter 15: Job in Saadiah Gaon and Early Medieval Judaism
• Chapter 16: Job in Maimonides and Gersonides
• Chapter 17: Job in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas
• Chapter 18: Job in the Zohar
• Chapter 19: Job in the Reformation (Luther and Calvin)
• Chapter 20: Job in the Renaissance
• Appendix C: Job in Literature and Drama
• Appendix D: Job in Medicine