Honorius closes with the story of the “Three Fools,” observed by a certain Father: the first an Ethiopian who was unable to move a faggot of wood, which he would continually unbind and make still heavier by adding further sticks; the second, a man pouring water into a vase which had no bottom; and, thirdly, the two men who came bearing before them crosswise a beam of wood; as they neared the city gate neither would let the other precede him even a little, and so both remained without. The Ethiopian who adds to his insupportable faggot is he who continually increases his weight of sin, adding new sins to old ones unrepented of; he who pours water into the vase with no bottom is he who by his uncleanness loses the merit of his good acts; and the two who bear the beam crosswise are those bound by the yoke of Pride.[56]
Such are good examples of the queer stories to which preachers resorted. One notices that whatever be the source from which Honorius draws, his interest is always in the allegory found in the narratives. Another very apt example of his manner is his treatment of the story of the Good Samaritan, so often depicted on Gothic church windows. For us this parable carries an exhaustless wealth of direct application in human life; it was regarded very differently by Honorius and the glass painters, whose windows are a pictorial transcription of the first half of his sermon.[57]
“Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly”—this is the text; and Honorius proceeds:
“Adam was the unhappy man who through the counsel of the wicked departed from his native land of Paradise and dragged all his descendants into this exile. He thus stood in the way of sinners, because he remained stable in sin. He sat ‘in the seat of the scornful,’ because by evil example he taught others to sin. But Christ arose, the blessed man who walketh in the counsel of the Father from the hall of heaven into prison after the lost servant. He did not walk in the counsel of the ungodly when the devil showed Him all the kingdoms of the world; He did not stand in the way of sinners, because He committed no sin; He did not sit in the seat of the scornful, since neither by word nor deed did He teach evil. Thus as that unhappy man drew all his carnal children into death, this blessed man brought all His sons to life. As He himself sets forth in the Gospel: ‘A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and robbers attacked and wounded him, stripped him and went away. And by chance there came that way a certain priest, who seeing him half-dead, crossed to the other side. Likewise a Levite passed by when he had seen him. But a Samaritan coming that same way, had compassion on the poor wretch, bound up his wounds and poured in oil and wine, and setting him on his own beast, brought him to an inn. The next day he gave the innkeeper two pence and asked that he care for him, and if more was needed He promised to repay the innkeeper on His return.’
“Surely man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho when our first parent from the joys of Paradise entered death’s eclipse. For Jericho, which means moon, designates the eclipse of our mortality. Whereby man fell among thieves, since a swarm of demons at once surrounded the exile. Wherefore also they despoiled him, since they stripped him of the riches of Paradise and the garment of immortality. They gave him wounds, for sins flowed in upon him. They left him half-dead, because dead in soul. The priest passed down the same way, as the Order of Patriarchs proceeded along the path of mortality. The priest left him wounded, having no power to aid the human race while himself sore wounded with sins. The Levite went that way, inasmuch as the Order of Prophets also had to tread the path of death. He too passed by the wounded man, because he could bear no human aid to the lost while himself groaning under the wounds of sin. The wretch half-dead was healed by the Samaritan, for the man set apart through Christ is made whole.
“Samaria was the chief city of the Israelitish kingdom whose chiefs were led away to idolatry in Nineveh, and Gentiles were placed in her. The Jews abhorred their fellowship, making them a byword of malediction. So when reviling the Lord, they called Him a Samaritan. The Lord was the true Samaritan, being called guardian (custos) since the human race is guarded by Him. He went down this way when from heaven He came into this world. He saw the wounded traveller, inasmuch as He saw man held in misery and sin. He was moved with compassion for him, since for man He undergoes all pains. Approaching, He bound his wounds when, proclaiming eternal life, He taught man to cease from sin. He bound his wounds together with the two parts of the bandage when He quelled sins through two fears—the servile fear which forbids through penalties, and the filial fear which exhorts the holy to good works. He drew tight the lower part of the bandage when He struck men’s hearts with fear of hell. Their worm, He said, does not die, and their fire is not quenched. He drew tight the upper part when He taught the fear which belongs to the study of good. ‘The children of the kingdom,’ said He, ‘shall be cast into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ He poured in wine and oil when He taught repentance and pardon. He poured in wine when He said, ‘Repent ye’; He added oil when He said, ‘for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ He set him upon His beast when He bore our sins in His body on the Cross. He led him to the inn when He joined him to the supernal Church. The inn, in which living beings are assembled at night, is the present Church, where the just are harboured amid the darkness of this life until the Day of Eternity blows and the shadows of mortality give way.
“The next day He tendered the two pence. The first day was of death, the next of life. The day of death began with Adam, when all die. The day of life took its beginning from Christ, in whom all shall be made alive. Before Christ’s resurrection all men were travelling to death; since His resurrection all the faithful have been rising to life. He tendered the two pence the next day—when after His resurrection He taught that the two Testaments were fulfilled by the two precepts of love. He gave the pence to the innkeeper when He committed the doctrine of the law of life to the Order of Doctors. He directed him to tend the sick man when He commanded that the human race should be saved from sin. The stench drove the sick man from the inn, because this world’s tribulation drives the righteous to seek the things celestial. Two pence are given to the innkeeper when the Doctors are raised on high by Scriptural knowledge and temporal honour. If they should require more, He repays them on His return; for if they exemplify good preaching with good works, when the true Samaritan returns to judgment and leads him, aforetime wounded but now healed, from the inn to the celestial mansion, He will repay the zealous stewards with eternal rewards.”[58]
Here Honorius proceeds to expound the allegory contained in the healing of the dumb man and the ten lepers, and closes his sermon with two narratives, one of a poor idiot who sang the Gloria without ceasing, and was seen in glory after death; the other of a lay nun (conversa) around whose last hours were shed sweet odours and a miraculous light, while those present heard the chant of heavenly voices.
The parables of Christ present types which we may apply in life according to circumstances. In the concrete instance of the parable we find the universal, and we deem Christ meant it so. Thus we also view the parables as symbols, which they were. Honorius, with the vast company of mediaeval and patristic expounders, ordinarily directs the symbolism of the parables in a special mode, whereby—like the stories of the Old Testament—they become figurative of Christ and the needy soul of man, or figurative of the Christian dispensation with its historical antecedents and its Day of Judgment at the end.
The like may be said of Honorius’s allegorical interpretation of Greek legends. These ancient stories have the perennial youth of human charm and meaning ever new. They had been good old stories to the Greeks, and then acquired further intendment as later men discerned a broader symbolism in them. Even in classic times, Homer’s stories had been turned to allegories, philosophers and critics sometimes finding in them a spiritual significance not unlike that which the same tales may bear for us. But with this difference: the later Greeks usually were trying to explain away the somewhat untrammelled ways of the Homeric pantheon, and therefore maintained that Homer’s stories were composed as allegories, the wise and mystic poet choosing thus to veil his meaning. To-day we find the clarity of daybreak in Homer’s tales, and if we make symbols of them we know the symbolism is not his but ours. Honorius chooses to think that allegory had always lain in the old story; he will not deem it the invention of himself or other Christian writers. Here his attitude is not unlike that of the apologetic Greek critics. But his interpretations are apt to differ from theirs as well as from our own. For his symbolism tends to abandon the broadly human, and to become, like the mediaeval Biblical interpretations, figurative of the tenets of the Christian Faith.