This study of translation and adaptation in medieval culture examines the biblical story of Samson as it appears in French and Latin verse and prose , as well as in art and in music. Samson’s biography is narrated in the Book of Judges 13–16. It is both familiar and unfamiliar to modern readers, and it was equally so for medieval audiences. Samson was known and thought about in many ways across medieval Europe, so this study is limited to south-west England in the High Middle Ages. The narrative was owned by generations of individuals, even in a relatively limited geographical and historical context, as a story, an object and a set of questions about men, women , strength and love . Despite its relatively short length and its limited significance for biblical chronology, the story of Samson stands out as multi-layered. It raises more questions than it answers about the value of physical strength, the power of emotions and the bonds created by an oath or a faith. Strength and weakness, mastery and victimhood, are the binary pairing that subtends and defines this heroic figure.
His conception and birth predicted by an angel , the young Samson’s mother commits him to the Nazirite oath : he will preserve his exceptional strength if he keeps his hair untrimmed and avoids consuming wine or unclean food . When Samson reaches adulthood, he persuades his parents to allow him to marry a Philistine woman. He kills a lion in secret, and a year later, he gathers honey from the beast’s carcass. Samson challenges the Philistines at the wedding feast with a riddle concerning that lion and that honey . The Philistines force his bride to unlock the answer to the riddle , but their success provokes Samson’s jealousy and he massacres his wedding guests. He returns a year later to find that the woman has been married off to someone else. Vengefully, he sets fire to the Philistines ’ vines and fields by tying torches to the tails of foxes , and he accidentally murders his former wife and father-in-law in the process. Samson attempts to withdraw from society, but this also fails. The Philistines capture him in his cave (he frees himself), and they trap him in the city of Gaza with a Philistine prostitute (he steals the city’s gates). Finally, Samson falls in love with Delilah , who teases the secret of his strength from him, shaves off his hair and hands him to the Philistines . Blinded and captive, his strength returns as his hair grows back. He pulls down the pillars of a building, killing himself and the Philistines who have gathered there to feast.
The multiple, complex aspects of the narrative can be seen even in a limited study such as this, focusing on receptions of the Medieval Latin Bible (Vulgate ) text and therefore the Christian tradition. The mediation of biblical text through liturgy, performance and preaching has been studied recently by Poleg. 1 In liturgy of the use of Rome, the book of Judges was read throughout Lent. The Samson story came shortly before the beginning of Holy Week, and this is certainly one reason for its association with the Passion in typological exegesis . 2 Copies of the Vulgate were not easily available, but this was far from the only means of accessing biblical texts. As Hoogvliet has suggested, verses and narratives were extracted, translated, dramatised and expounded. Reading practices were discontinuous and did not always involve the written word. 3 Such practices of reception and reinvention produced sculptures and musical works as well as literary texts and in turn either introduced or permitted divergent interpretations. The plethora of Samsons in the visual arts also draws attention to how, where and by whom such stories were told. Samson was a warrior and a fool, absent from the Christian liturgical calendar, endowed with Christological prestige but also with human frailty.
This study focuses on Bible translations, Latin songs and sculptures transmitted through abbeys, priories and churches in Western England and the Welsh Marches. It is a well-known cluster of religious houses, strong on book production and on music, but the geographical spread also corresponds to that of the so-called Herefordshire School of sculpture: the diocese of Hereford , the county of Oxfordshire and religious houses near Gloucester and Bristol (the cluster is visible on a map, online). 4 My enquiry assumes that there were intellectual and cultural connections between such items as the carving of a lion -killing Samson at the parish church of Stretton Sugwas and a smaller example in the Benedictine priory of Leominster. Leominster was a daughter-house of Reading Abbey , where the lyric drama Samson, dux fortissime was sung in the thirteenth century. Further north lies the Cistercian Abbey of Buildwas, where a monk jotted down the first stanza of Samson, dux fortissime . A gaming counter depicting Samson killing a lion was thrown into the moat at Gloucester castle, near St. Peter’s Abbey (source of a commentary on the book of Judges ) and a few miles from the Augustinian priory of Llanthony II. Llanthony II housed a copy of an Old French verse Old Testament poem. Taken separately, these are no more than fragments of medieval cultural production. Seen as a whole, they sketch out the ways in which the story of Samson was known and retold by several closely connected reading communities.
In the twelfth century, the most learned readers could learn about Samson in monastic commentaries and read an Old French prose translation of his life (see the last part of this chapter). They could narrate the tale when they encountered religious sculptures or played a board game in a completely secular setting (Chapter 2). They could listen to a sophisticated planctus by Abelard and a verse paraphrase in French that adapted the conventions of Old French romance . In the thirteenth century, audiences and performers of the Latin musical drama Samson, dux fortissime were presented with a hero whose sufferings were likened to that of a lyric lover as much as of a saint (all in Chapter 3). By the fourteenth century, readers could choose from a visual rendition, a vernacular summary that emulated prose romances , a loose translation supported by typological glosses or a word-for-word transposition (Chapter 4). The consistent emotional appeal of this story meant that sophisticated, even subversive, readings could emerge either through these processes of adaptation or in the minds of their readers and audiences.
Commentaries
Before moving on to the medieval commentary tradition, it is important to notice the very varied modern understanding of this biblical story, as well as its ability to straddle boundaries of elite and popular culture. Samson is usually Delilah’s victim (Judges 16), and this aspect alone has received varied...