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Delving into the Deep: Bernardian Echoes in Catherine of Siena’s Theology, Part 1

St. Catherine Benincasa is one of only four women to be declared a Doctor of the Church (Oct. 4, 1970) for her contribution to the understanding of Christian scripture and for her advancement of theology. That said, there has long been discussion of the extent to which Catherine was educated, even literate, given that, as a woman during the Late Middle Ages, formal paths of learning were unopen to her. Born in 1347 into a well-off working-class family of Siena, she showed even as a child an inclination towards the holy life.

St. Catherine’s childhood home in Siena. Photographed by Hannah Zdansky.
The courtyard outside the home. Photographed by Hannah Zdansky.
View from the home into the Tuscan countryside. Photographed by Hannah Zdansky.

Against her parents’ preference to see her married, she became a Dominican tertiary at the age of eighteen. The remaining years of her life were spent in a great deal of action, tending to the poor and sick of her community as well as travelling to intercede in political disputes, but also lengthy contemplation, with her receiving many visions over her lifetime and the stigmata in 1375. Between this year and her death in 1380, Catherine also undertook to write a plethora of letters to important figures as well as to those closest to her, these being, in a way, her outlet for preaching, since, at least officially, women were not allowed to preach (as they still are not in some Christian denominations). These letters, and also her greatest work, her “libro,” the Dialogo della divina provvidenza, were almost all dictated to scribes, which has led some scholars to question the degree of Catherine’s agency in her output. But the important thing to remember is that this was not an uncommon practice even for men, and we do know that Catherine wrote some letters herself because she tells us this, though these were written in Italian, not the learned Latin of the clerical elite. Catherine, for her part, however, never let anything deter her. She is perhaps most famously known for marching to Avignon to tell Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome, which he did.

Basilica Cateriniana di San Domenico, a thirteenth-century church located just down the street from Catherine’s childhood home and in which she spent much time. Some of her relics, particularly her head, are housed here. Her body, however, lies in the Basilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Photographed by Hannah Zdansky.

But what of Catherine’s continued learning over the years of her ministry—on her own and through those in her circles—and her intellectual contributions? There has been consideration given to her influences in much of the scholarship, but I will focus on one predecessor that has received limited attention. We know that Catherine was inspired by the likewise politically-involved and reformative twelfth-century mystic and Doctor, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), because Catherine quotes Bernard in some of her letters.[i] However, it is difficult to know how exactly she might have been exposed to his works and to which ones precisely. Nonetheless, there are striking parallels between her theological thinking and Bernard’s, which is something that her confessor and later hagiographer, Blessed Raymond of Capua (1330-1399), emphasized by means of a metaphor that Catherine herself invented of God as a tranquil ocean.

For anyone who has even dabbled in medieval Christian theology and mysticism, it should no doubt have become quickly apparent that a longtime, widespread, major preoccupation is the gradual perfection of the human will in a journey towards God and the hope of beatific vision—you know, the ending of Dante’s Commedia. This ascent of the soul or mind is allegorized using various schemata: ladders or stairs, mountains, trees, the body of Christ, a six-winged seraph, etc. But what is key is that this progression occurs by means of specific steps, stages, or degrees (though these differ slightly from text to text) until the human will—through the soul’s exertion and divine grace working in tandem—becomes so refined, so like unto God’s, that the person’s will and God’s become one, and the individual and God are joined in metaphysical union, the end result being what is called theosis.[ii]

London, British Library, MS Additional 37049, f. 37v. An example of a ladder from a Northern English Carthusian miscellany (c. 1460-1500), largely didactic and devotional in nature, consisting of religious treatises and poems, chronicles, and even an abbreviated version of Mandeville’s Travels.[iii] The rungs, representing certain virtues, read: “meknes” [meekness], “pou(er)te” [poverty], “obediens” [obedience], “chastite” [chastity], “charite” [charity], leading to “Þe Mounte of P(er)fecc(i)on” [The Mount of Perfection] and God’s embrace.
One of the best-known theologians to develop such a schema was St. Bernard of Clairvaux. His first published work, The Steps of Humility and Pride (c. 1120), employs the image of a ladder and gives a rather straightforward and practical account of the vices and actions that drag one down the ladder, whereas the virtues and behavior prescribed by St. Benedict serve as the counters, leading one upwards. However, Bernard goes into much more conceptual, soteriological detail in his later work, On Loving God (De diligendo Deo) (c. 1126). Herein, St. Bernard describes the degrees of love through which a soul should progress in rather abstract terms without much recourse to figurative language or imagery. He claims that “Since we are carnal and born of the concupiscence of the flesh, our cupidity or love must begin with the flesh,” but in order to achieve salvation, love must advance, “until it is consummated in the spirit” (40).[iv] According to Bernard, a person moves from when “man […] loves himself for himself because he is carnal and sensitive to nothing but himself” (first degree) to loving God “for man’s sake and not for God’s sake,” “when he sees he cannot subsist by himself” (40) (second degree). Because humans are corporeal creatures, the first thing they are able to know and to love is themselves (25). Yet they begin to move outwards from themselves when they sense an insufficiency, a lacking. This begins the shift into the second degree when a person realizes that they need something more and searches to love outside their being, but does so for themselves, loving God for the advantage it brings them (27). In Augustinian language, this is still cupiditas, for one’s love remains focused upon the self.[v]

A dramatic transformation occurs, though, between the second and third degrees. The third is attained when a person “loves God not now because of himself but because of God” (41). That is, a person turns from focusing upon themselves to focusing upon something greater, desiring God not for personal gratification, but out of pure love. At this point, caritas is achieved. The fourth degree of love, then, involves a person’s desires becoming superseded by God’s when a person comes to love themselves, others, and all of creation through God because that is God’s will, and in reaching the fourth degree, God’s and a person’s wills become one (29). However, Bernard opines that, “I doubt if he ever attains the fourth degree during this life, that is, if he ever loves only for God’s sake” (41). But if this were to be the case, Bernard says it would occur “when the good and faithful servant is introduced into his Lord’s joy, is inebriated by the richness of God’s dwelling. In some wondrous way he forgets himself and ceasing to belong to himself, he passes entirely into God and adhering to him, he becomes one with him in spirit” (41). When a soul thus arrives at the fourth degree, its final destination, it must turn back to the world through God just as a pilgrim must return to his or her point of origin, but in both cases, the person has been utterly changed through their experiences, acquiring a radically different outlook. However, the attitude that St. Bernard expresses here is that the fourth degree is tricky. Indeed, it requires much of the human person, forgoing one’s will completely and adhering entirely to God.

St. Catherine conceives of a similar progression in her Dialogue, but she makes use of a common devotional image—the body of Christ.[vi] She is also more positive in her hopes for humanity, but her indebtedness to Bernard’s thinking should become abundantly clear, since she too presents a pilgrimage of love, which, as Bernard would say, “advances by fixed degrees, led on by grace” (40). According to Catherine’s schema, the journey begins in a river below a physical bridge, which is Jesus Christ, the ontological and moral Bridge joining Heaven and earth.[vii] Here, a person is trying to forge their way across the swift water into Paradise without consideration for God. But for this reason, they will never succeed (67). Suzanne Noffke, the text’s translator, refers to this stage as “slavish” love because the person is a slave to sin out of love for themselves, and even if they begin to turn to God, the regard remains servile out of fear of punishment (67).[viii] I believe this best fits Bernard’s first degree of love. As Mary Ann Follmar explains more concisely in her commentary, God, with ineffable love, sends the soul gifts, hoping that it will better recognize the true source of its blessings. If this does not work, then God allows the winds of adversity to blow, abetting self-reflection (6-7).[ix] Should all go well, according to the Dialogue, the person will realize that everything they have is from God, and due to this, they will be moved to love with a mercenary love, that is, for the profit they can derive from God (113). The mercenary love enacted at the feet of Christ the Bridge exemplifies Bernard’s second degree (Catherine’s first).

As the person’s affections continue to be ordered through self-knowledge, which inextricably entails knowledge of God, they progress to the side of Jesus through which they enter into Christ’s heart via his side wound.[x] In the arduous climb to Christ’s side, the person becomes a “good and faithful servant,” but as selfishness diminishes further, they become Christ’s friend and pass into his heart (64, 115). Follmar clarifies that, “The opening in the heart signifies intimacy of affection and confidence,” which can only exist between close friends. When someone loves like a friend, they do so without respect for themselves; the person now “loves virtue and every good solely for love of God” (45). This is why they can now experience Christ’s secret, “the manifestation of divine love,” symbolized by the blood poured forth from Christ’s heart upon the cross (46). By reaching the stage where the will of the person has dissipated and is being replaced with God’s, the heart of Christ becomes the person’s own heart. This, I think, is Bernard’s third degree but Catherine’s second.

By way of the heart, the pilgrim then travels to Christ’s mouth. Here, the love has become more than just friendship; now it is also filial. In this last stage, in the words of God to Catherine, the person “loves me for myself, because I am supreme Goodness and deserve to be loved, and she loves herself and her neighbors because of me, to offer glory and praise to my name” (141). The destination of the mouth signifies for Catherine the third and fourth stages of the soul, which seem to represent Bernard’s fourth degree. The distinction Catherine makes is that embracing the world through God and learning to love God in one’s neighbor and self (third) leads to an even more perfect union with God (fourth). Perfect love is achieved in the heart of Christ, but “(most) perfect love,” as Thomas McDermott dubs it, is attained at the third step, which necessarily leads to the greatest union with God that can be accomplished (183-193).[xi] The ultimate end of the journey is to come to the gate on the other side of the Bridge that leads into Paradise, but the threshold may not be crossed while alive. Nevertheless, Catherine, functioning as God’s mouthpiece, tells us that,

For once souls have risen up in eager longing, they run in virtue along the bridge […] and arrive at the gate with their spirits lifted up to me. When they have crossed over [the bridge] and are inebriated with the blood and aflame with the fire of love, they taste in me the eternal Godhead, and I am to them a peaceful sea with which the soul becomes so united that her spirit knows no movement but in me. Though she is mortal, she tastes the reward of the immortal (147-148, my emphasis).

And if the still living pilgrim then turns back to the world through God, she or he can live out Bernard’s fourth degree.

McDermott notes that, “the peaceful sea is […] an image of the soul’s destiny, that of ultimate union with God,” and he is certainly correct (199). But we need to examine this metaphor a bit more closely because it is one that Catherine, as well as Raymond of Capua, rely upon a great deal. And while Catherine’s use of Christ’s body as an allegorical roadmap, of sorts, is helpful, particularly with regard to eliciting an affective response, it also remains abstract from the standpoint of human experience. How can a person, in the flesh, truly conceive of something like the fourth degree of love, conceive of being so united to God that one’s entire existence—one’s reality—is mediated through God? In short, how can we conceive of theosis?

Image of Catherine on a rooftop near her home. Photographed by Hannah Zdansky.

Hannah Zdansky, Ph.D.
University of Notre Dame

 

[i] One example is in a letter to the Abbess of Santa Marta in Siena. See p. 52 of vol. 1 of The Letters of Catherine of Siena. 3 vols. Trans. Suzanne Noffke. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000. Kenelm Foster notes that some forty such citations have been identified in the Letters. See p. 312 of “St. Catherine’s Teaching on Christ.” Life of the Spirit 16 (1962): 310-323.

[ii] It must be said, though, that Western theologians are often a bit more skeptical of the possibility of theosis than Eastern Christian thinkers, an example of which pessimism we can see in St. Bernard’s work in what follows.

[iii] More information as well as the entire digitized manuscript can be found here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_37049. For an excellent study, see Jessica Brantley’s Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

[iv] For this translation, see On Loving God. Trans. Emero Stiegman. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1995. For an edition of the text, see Liber de diligendo Deo. Sancti Bernardi opera. vol. 3. Ed. J. Leclercq and H. M. Rochais. Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1963. 119-154.

[v] Bernard’s understanding of charity and cupidity is very much reliant upon St. Augustine of Hippo’s (354-430). See especially Augustine’s De doctrina christiana (c. 396-427), specifically Bk. 3, Ch. 10, § 16, which is on p. 88 of the following translation: On Christian Doctrine. Trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997. For an edition, see De doctrina christiana. Ed. J. Martin. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina. vol. 32. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1962. 1-167.

[vi] It is quite possible that Catherine was also inspired to use this image through St. Bernard’s third and fourth sermons on the Song of Songs. See On the Song of Songs I. Trans. Kilian Walsh. Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1971.

[vii] The translation used throughout is the following: The Dialogue. Trans. Suzanne Noffke. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, Inc., 1980. For an edition, see Il Dialogo della Divina Provvidenza ovvero Libro della Divina Dottrina. Ed. Giuliana Cavallini. Rome: Edizioni Cateriniane, 1968.

[viii] See Noffke’s book Catherine of Siena: Vision through a Distant Eye. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1996.

[ix] See Follmar’s The Steps of Love in The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena. Petersham, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1987.

[x] Heather Webb mentions that St. Bernard of Clairvaux was one of the first to state definitively that the spear which pierced Christ’s side reached all the way to his heart (805). See “Catherine of Siena’s Heart.” Speculum 80 (2005): 802-817.

[xi] See McDermott’s Catherine of Siena: Spiritual Development in Her Life and Teaching. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, Inc., 2008.

Appendix:

St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s Degrees of Love (De diligendo Deo)  

St. Catherine of Siena’s Degrees of Love (Dialogo della divina provvidenza)

 
1. Man loves himself for his own sake: “man first loves himself for himself because he is carnal and sensitive to nothing but himself” (40).

 

 0. The River of Sin – Slavish Love: “But those who do not keep to this way travel below through the river […]. And since there is no restraining the water, no one can cross through it without drowning. Such are the pleasures and conditions of the world. Those whose love and desire are not grounded on the rock but are set without order on created persons and things apart from me […] run on just as they do” (67).

“Open your mind’s eye and look at those who drown by their own choice and see how they have fallen by their sins. […] they have become servants and slaves of sin. I made them trees of love through the life of grace […]. But they have become trees of death, because they are dead. Do you know where this tree of death is rooted? In the height of pride, which is nourished by their sensual selfishness” (73).

“You know that every evil is grounded in selfish love of oneself” (103).

 
2. Man loves God for his own benefit: “when he sees he cannot subsist by himself, he begins to seek for God by faith and to love him as necessary to himself. So in the second degree of love, man loves God for man’s sake and not for God’s sake” (40).

 

 1. The Feet of Jesus – Mercenary Love: “There are others who become faithful servants. They serve me with love rather than that slavish fear which serves only for fear of punishment. But their love is imperfect, for they serve me for their own profit or for the delight and pleasure they find in me” (113).

“They love their neighbors with the same love with which they love me—for their own profit” (114).

 
3. Man loves God for God’s sake: “When man tastes how sweet God is, he passes to the third degree of love in which man loves God not now because of himself but because of God” (41).

 

 2. The Wounded Side of Jesus – Love of Friendship: “If you love me the way a servant loves a master, I as your master will give you what you have earned, but I will not show myself to you, for secrets are shared only with a friend who has become one with oneself. Still, servants can grow because of their virtue and the love they bear their master, even to becoming his very dear friend. So it is with these souls. As long as their love remains mercenary, I do not show myself to them. But they can, with contempt for their imperfection and with love of virtue, use hatred to dig out the root of their spiritual selfishness. They can sit in judgment on themselves so that motives of slavish fear and mercenary love do not cross their hearts without being corrected in the light of most holy faith. If they act in this way, it will please me much that for this they will come to the love of friendship. And then I will show myself to them, just as my Truth said: ‘Those who love me will be one with me and I with them, and I will show myself to them and we will make our dwelling place together.’ This is how it is with very dear friends. Their loving affection makes them two bodies with one soul, because love transforms one into what one loves” (115-116).

 
4. Man loves himself for the sake of God: “Happy the man who has attained the fourth degree of love, he no longer even loves himself except for God” (29).

“man remains a long time in this [third] degree, and I doubt if he ever attains the fourth degree during this life, that is, if he ever loves only for God’s sake” (41).

“No doubt, this happens when the good and faithful servant is introduced into his Lord’s joy, is inebriated by the richness of God’s dwelling. In some wondrous way he forgets himself and ceasing to belong to himself, he passes entirely into God and adhering to him, he becomes one with him in spirit” (41).

 

 3. The Mouth of Jesus – Filial Love: “Now this is how the soul acts who has in truth reached the third stair. This is the sign that she has reached it: Her selfish will died when she tasted my loving charity, and this is why she found her spiritual peace and quiet in the mouth. […] She has let go of and drowned her own will, and when that will is dead, there is peace and quiet” (141).

“She brings forth virtue for her neighbors without pain” (141).

“she loves me for myself, because I am supreme Goodness and deserve to be loved, and she loves herself and her neighbors because of me, to offer glory and praise to my name” (141).

“After she has come to perfect, free love, she lets go of herself and comes out […]. And this brings her to the fourth stage. That is, after the third stage, the stage of perfection in which she both tastes and gives birth to charity in the person of her neighbor, she is graced with a final stage of perfect union with me. These two stages are linked together, for one is never found without the other any more than charity for me can exist without charity for one’s neighbors or the latter without charity for me. The one cannot be separated from the other. Even so, neither of these two stages can exist without the other” (137).

 
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Dragonomics: Smaug and Climate Change

Today, we talk about dragons. I refer specifically to the greedy, northern (often fire-breathing) variety as described in Beowulf and featured in Tolkien’s Hobbit, and I will consider how these monsters present environmental catastrophe as a direct result of hoarding and greed.

My discussion of dragons and climate change continues my recent series of blogs interested in placing medieval literature (and in this case also modern medievalism) in conversation with current crises. This blog develops an earlier argument made in a paper at a “Tolkien in Vermont” conference (2014), titled “Dragonomics: Smaug and Pollution on Middle-Earth,” in which I argue that pollution in Tolkien’s Hobbit is linked to both the literal destruction by the dragon, and the rampant greed that motivates Smaug and ultimately initiates the plunder and violence at the Battle of Five Armies.

‘Dragon Hoard,’ Stephen Hickman (1985).

In the past, I have defined dragonomics as “the relationship between greed and catastrophe characteristic of certain representations of medieval dragons (especially the Beowulf-dragon),” which I separately argued also may apply to the study of Smaug in Tolkien’s Hobbit. In Beowulf, both the draca “dragon” slain by Sigemund (892), and the draca slain by Beowulf (2211), are depicted as excessively greedy, possessing heaps of beagas “rings” (894 and 3105) and frætwe “treasures” (896 and 3133). To emphasize the extent of their respective plunder, the dragon in the Sigemund episode is named hordes hyrde “guardian of the hoard” (887), and likewise the Beowulf-dragon is characterized repeatedly as hordweard “hoard-guardian” (2293, 2302, 2554, 2593), an epithet otherwise used throughout poem to describe kings, such as Hroðgar (1047) and Beowulf (1852).

Smaug’s hoard is equally impressive, and Tolkien describes the dragon atop his treasure: “Beneath him, under all his limbs and his coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light” (215). Likewise when Smaug attacks, Bard of Lake-town acknowledges that the dragon is “the only king under the Mountain we have ever known” (248). Smaug similarly styles himself a king in his riddling conversation with Bilbo. Before he journeys to destroy Esgaroth, Smaug proudly remarks that “They shall see me and remember who is the real King under the Mountain!” (233).

Smaug and Bilbo, from Jackson’s ‘The Desolation of Smaug’ (2013).

Indeed, it is the hoarded wealth of a dying people that lures the Beowulf-dragon to the barrow (2270-72), and similarly, in Tolkien’s Hobbit, we learn that the dwarves’ obscene wealth is what lured Smaug to Erebor in the first place. Thorin explicitly notes how their hoard attracted Smaug:

“So my grandfather’s halls became full of armour and jewels and carvings and cups, and the toy market of Dale was the wonder of the North. Undoubtedly, that was what brought the dragon” (23).

Although the greedy wyrm “serpent” (891) that Sigemund kills is not described as particularly destructive, the avaricious Beowulf-dragon becomes belligerent once its wealth is disturbed by an anonymous thief, who steals its dryncfæt deore “precious drinking-cup” (2254). The narrator explains that after the wyrm (2287) is robbed of his prized chalice, he ravages the countryside causing widespread destruction.

Manuscript image of Beowulf, British Library, Cotton Vitellius a.xv, f.184r.
Beowulf, 2312-27
Ða se gæst ongan   gledum spiwan,
beorht hofu bærnan;   bryneleoma stod
eldum on andan.   No ðær aht cwices
lað lyftfloga   læfan wolde.
Wæs þæs wyrmes wig   wide gesyne,
nearofages nið   nean ond feorran,
hu se guðsceaða   Geata leode
hatode ond hynde;   hord eft gesceat,
dryhtsele dyrnne,   ær dæges hwile.
Hæfde landwara   lige befangen,
bæle ond bronde.   Beorges getruwode,
wiges ond wealles.   Him seo wen geleah.
Þa wæs Biowulfe   broga gecyðed
snude to soðe,   þæt his sylfes ham,
bolda selest,   brynewylmum mealt,
gifstol Geata.
“Then the spirit began to spew flames, burning the bright buildings. The burning-light [i.e. dragon] remained in anger toward all humans. The loathsome air-flier wanted to leave nothing alive there. The war of the serpent, the enmity of the narrow-hostile one, was widely seen, near and far—how the war-harmer hated and humiliated the Geatish people. It shot back to its hoard, its secret lordly-hall, a while before daybreak. The land-citizens had been surrounded by fire, by flame and brand. It trusted in its barrow, war and wall. The expectation for him was deceived. Then was the terror known to Beowulf, quickly to truth, that his own home, the best of houses, melted in burning-waves, the gift-throne of the Geats.”

In Tolkien’s Hobbit, widespread devastation occurs when Smaug first plunders the wealth from the dwarves, unlike in Beowulf, where the hoarders are long-dead (2236-70). Pollution seems to accompany Smaug, and in Thorin’s retelling of the dwarves’ exile from Erebor, he describes how “A fog fell on Dale, and in the fog the dragon came on them” (23). Smaug again causes calamity when his hoard is disturbed, and Bilbo—like the Beowulf-thief—steals a treasured cup from the dragon. Bilbo accidentally directs Smaug’s attention toward Lake-town, and when the dragon attacks, he arrives with “shadows of dense black” (249) that engulfs the city.

Smaug attacking Lake-town, Rankin and Bass’ ‘The Hobbit’ (1977).

Although both dragons lay waste to the surrounding region, Smaug’s pollution of Middle-Earth expands well beyond the scope of his medieval predecessor. Indeed, as a result of Smaug, the environment has been poisoned, and a once lush and thriving place had withered as a result of excessive smoke and heat.

I would argue that for Tolkien—whose environmentalism is no secret—Smaug represents a more contemporary form of dragonomics with special attention toward the ways in which greed drives war and industry, which pollutes the land and skies. The smog episodes in London throughout the 19th and 20th centuries–which culminated in the “Great Smog” of 1952 that killed 4,000 people–may not be part of the “philological jest“ of the dragon’s name (since Tolkien describes the etymology of Smaug as derived from the past tense smaug of the proto-Germanic smugan “to squeeze through a hole” in his 1938 Observer letter); nevertheless, Smaug becomes a representation of the dragonomics more closely associated with industrialization, which promised wealth but delivered also ecological catastrophe. Tolkien emphasizes that “his hot breath shriveled the grass” (219) and “The dragon had withered all the pleasant green” (229).

London during the Great Smog of 1952, Associated Newspapers /REX.

Smaug is characteristically avaricious, and Thorin describes him as “a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm called Smaug” (23).” Tolkien refers to Smaug’s environmental impact as “The Desolation of the Dragon” (203, 255), and the author imagines an earlier, greener and more plentiful time before the dragon made his mark:

“There was little grass, and before long there was neither bush nor tree, and only broken and blackened stumps to speak of ones long vanished” (203).

I would argue that Smaug’s pollution changes the climate of Middle-Earth, affecting the land and the skies, but also the rivers and woods (such as the poisoned river and forests encountered in Mirkwood), and even the Elf-king’s woodland realm and the human merchant city of Lake-town. A conversation between Bilbo and Balin emphasizes Smaug’s lingering effect. Bilbo wagers that ‘The dragon is still alive—or I imagine so from the smoke’ (204), but Balin is worried about the lasting pollution of Smaug, and so the dwarf objects. Balin explains how Smaug “might be gone away some time … and still I expect smokes and steams would come out of the gates: all the halls within must be filled with his foul reek” (204). Bilbo discovers the truth of the dwarf’s words, for even when Smaug is not at home, “the worm-stench was heavy in the place, and the taste of vapour was on his tongue” (235).

Smog in Lianyungang, China (2013), Chinafotopress/Getty Images.

I offer this interpretation of Tolkien’s dragon, because I would suggest that Smaug may be productively read as a representation of climate change, in the sense that the dragon is a force of smoke and heat which destroys ecosystems and disrupts the environment in much deeper and more long-lasting ways. Indeed, Tolkien reiterates the ecological cost of Smaug’s presence, and he describes how “his hot breath shriveled the grass” (219) and “The dragon had withered all the pleasant green” (229).

Since the president’s declaration of a national emergency with regard to the alleged immigration crisis on the southern border of the United States, many have already begun to discuss the potential for a future president to declare a national emergency in order to act on climate change more comprehensively, if necessary. We are already imagining our environmental crisis as the monster it threatens to be.

Cal Fire firefighter in Igo, CA (2018), Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee via AP.

At the center of our modern struggles with dragonomics, I would argue, the problem of avarice endures. It is greed, especially from the fossil fuel lobby and the major energy companies (many linked to nations themselves), which have stalled and prevented developments in renewable energies in order to reduce our carbon footprint. And greed continues to obstruct human efforts to act upon the issue, both globally and as individual nations, as the looming dragon grows ever bigger and more ominous.

Dragonomics is not simply about making money, it is about plundering it and more importantly hoarding it. I have already referenced how greed motivates Smaug’s plunder, and I will turn now to Tolkien’s description of dragon-hoarding:

“Dragons steal gold and jewels…and they guard their plunder as long as they live….and never enjoy a brass ring of it. Indeed they hardly know a good bit of work from a bad, though they usually have a good notion of the market value” (23).

‘Smaug,’ Sam Kieser (2012).

The socially detrimental result of hoarding obscene wealth marks the very pinnacle of greed in the Hobbit, which Tolkien describes specifically as “dragon-sickness” (305).  I would argue that hoarding is also a major motivating force when it comes to our environmental crisis, especially with regard to our delayed and incoherent responses to the issues climate change presents. This is especially true with regard to the oil companies and related special interests linked to fossil fuels, which in their attempts to consolidate and retain their wealth and virtual monopoly on energy, have awoken a terrible dragon, one that will dwarf Smaug and will require heroism—not only from those in leadership positions, but also from the people. Indeed, when it comes to the crisis of global pollution and climate change, Bilbo’s sentiments ring truer to me than ever: “‘This whole place still stinks of dragon….and it makes me sick’” (267).

Thorin’s final words to Bilbo, Rankin and Bass’ ‘The Hobbit’ (1977).

Still, it is Thorin’s famous deathbed realization that speaks most directly to today’s crisis, if the goal is to work together globally in order to combat our collective environmental crisis. The moment calls for a collective change of attitude, particularly from those who maintain that profits and economics necessarily trump ecological concerns. As even the miserly dwarf-king, formerly seduced by “the bewitchment of the hoard” (240), must admit at the end of his life: “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world” (290).

Richard Fahey
PhD Candidate in English
University of Notre Dame

Editions and Translations:

Tolkien, J. R. R. 1937. The Hobbit, or, There and back again. George Allen & Unwin.
Pages correspond to:
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1937. The Hobbit, or, There and back again (Mass Market Edition). HarperCollins Publishers. 2012.

Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Bilingual Edition). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2000.

Klaeber’s Beowulf (Fourth Edition), ed. R.D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, John D. Niles. University of Toronto Press. 2008.

Further Reading:

Abram, Christopher. Evergreen Ash: Ecology and Catastrophe in Old Norse Myth and Literature. University of Virginia Press. 2019.

Bates, Robin. “Dragon Billionaires Assaulting America.” Better Living Through Beowulf. September 19, 2012.

Cooke, William. “Who Cursed Whom, and When? The Cursing of the Hoard and Beowulf’s Fate.” Medium Aevum 76.2 (2007): 207-224.

Evans, Jonathan D. “A Semiotics and Traditional Lore: The Medieval Dragon Tradition.” Journal of Folklore Research 22 (1985): 85-112.

—. “‘As Rare as They Are Dire’: Old Norse Dragons, Beowulf and the Deutsche Mythologie”: 207-269. In The Shadow-Walkers: Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous, ed. Tom Shippey. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 2005.

Lawrence, William Witherle. “The Dragon and His Lair in Beowulf.” PMLA 33.4 (1918): 547-583.

Lee, Alvin A. Gold-hall and Earth-dragon: Beowulf as Metaphor. University of Toronto Press. 1998.

Lionarons, Joyce Tally. The Medieval Dragon: The Nature of the Beast in Germanic Literature. Hisarlik Press. 1998.

Park, Jisung and James Hacker. “The Derivation of Smaug: Dragons, Methane, and Climate Change.” Sense and Sustainability. January, 20, 2014.

Rauer, Christine. Beowulf and the Dragon: Parallels and Analogues. Boydell and Brewer. 2000.

Shabala, Alex. “From Smaug to Smog: Historical carbon emissions due to dragons in Middle Earth.” Climate System Analysis Group. January 27, 2014.

Shippey, T.A. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Mariner Books. 2003.

Silber, Patricia. “Gold and Its Significance in Beowulf.” Annuale Mediaevale 18 (1977): 5-19.

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Working Groups in Progress (2018-2019): Jewish and Christian Books in the First Millennium CE

Medieval manuscripts create the conditions for much of our knowledge of the past. The working group on “Jewish and Christian Books in the First Millennium CE” engages Jewish and Christian texts from Late Antiquity to the early modern period, focusing on how material texts and the history of reading enrich our understanding of these texts and their readers. By illuminating the ways in which textual knowledge was—and continues to be—produced, accessed, and preserved, the study of material texts is fundamental to the study of both Judaism and Christianity.

A central emphasis for our working group is the ways that Christian and Jewish communities have oriented themselves around books and reading. For our first meeting of the year, we discussed David Stern’s The Jewish Bible: A Material History(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017). Stern argues that Jewish books have often been adapted in response to the book technologies of neighboring cultures, but are also marked as Jewish through their physical form.

A recurring theme in the working group is how both physical technologies and cultural practices facilitate the creation of textual knowledge. The production of texts builds on complex interaction between spoken language, written text, and habits of reading. In November, Tzvi Novick introduced us to a particular example of this complexity by presenting his work on “Orality, Writing, and Language Choice in Early Roman Palestine.” In our next meeting (1 March), Hildegund Müller will discuss the medieval manuscript transmission of Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos. Her work engages the ways that medieval manuscripts, their scribes, and their readers have preserved and changed Augustine’s oeuvre.

Scribes and readers also curate texts for the benefit of subsequent readers. One way to do this is by providing paratexts, that is, features like tables of contents, section divisions, or explanatory notes that guide the reader and structure the text. In October, Jeremiah Coogan presented his research on the Eusebian apparatus, a set of Gospel cross-references that occurs in late ancient and medieval manuscripts from Ireland to Ethiopia. He argued that the Eusebian apparatus creates new possibilities for reading the Gospels, which we can see at work in a number of examples from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. On 12 April, Paul Wheatley will present a paper titled “Behind the Veil of Translation: Onomastics, Interpretation, and Revelation.” Paul will discuss onomastic lists, which often appear in biblical manuscripts and explain the names of biblical people and places. Like the Eusebian apparatus, these manuscript features shape how readers encounter sacred text on the page.

Because such paratexts are added by certain readers for the benefit of other readers, they enable us to glimpse medieval reading in action. Another way that we can observe the history of reading is by attending to what readers write. In our February meeting, Andrew King demonstrated how digital analysis can be applied to ancient texts. Andrew’s paper on “The Big Data of Intertextuality and the Book of Deuteronomy” offers an approach to “distance reading” that illuminates trends in the citation of biblical texts by various authors over time.

Modern practices of collection and conservation likewise generate particular bodies of knowledge to be studied. In our January 2019 meeting, the working group looked at Brent Nongbri’s recent monograph, God’s Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018). Focusing on late ancient manuscripts from Egypt, Nongbri shows how nineteenth- and twentieth-century archeologists, dealers, and collectors shaped the manuscript collections that modern scholars study and what we know about them. Nongbri’s work also engages the physical features of early Christian books and the challenges of historically contextualizing them.

Physical books are always situated in economic, ritual, and readerly contexts. On 31 May, we will host a conference on “The Material Gospel” to discuss the Gospels as material artifacts. Gospel books were powerful objects. Augustine of Hippo complains that his audiences put Gospel books under their pillows to cure toothache. Amulets attest that even short Gospel excerpts were used for protective power. The Gospel in codex format represented Christian identity. Gospel books were processed in liturgy and imposed on the shoulders of ordinands. As an anthological object, the multiple-Gospel codex contributed to the development of a fourfold canonical Gospel. In times of persecution, Gospel books might even be subject to public execution in place of Christ himself. The conference will explore these and similar questions from the first five centuries CE. This conference will serve as a fitting conclusion to this year’s working group, drawing together a wide range of conversations about books and reading.

Jeremiah Coogan, PhD Candidate
University of Notre Dame