Читать книгу Gesammelte Aufsätze zur romanischen Philologie – Studienausgabe. Herausgegeben und ergänzt um Aufsätze, Primärbibliographie und Nachwort von Matthias Bormuth und Martin Vialon онлайн

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Tu vuo’ saper chi è in questa lumera

che qui appresso me cosi scintilla,

come raggio di sole in acqua mera.

Or sappi che là entro si tranquilla

Raab; e a nostr’ ordine congiunta,

di lei nel sommo grado si sigilla.

Da questo cielo, in cui l’ombra s’appunta

che’l vostro mondo face, pria ch’altr’alma

del triunfo di Cristo fu assunta.

Ben si convenne lei lasciar per palma

in alcun cielo de l’alta vittoria

che s’acquistò con l’una e l’altra palma,

perch’ella favorò la prima gloria

di Josuè in su la Terra Santa

che poco tocca al papa la memoria.

The book of Joshua, especially its first chapters, has been interpreted from the very earliest times of Christianity as a figure of the appearance of Christ; all the details of the passing over the Jordan and of the conquest of Jericho have entered into the framework of this figura, one of the most famous and popular of Christian Antiquity and the Middle AgesMittelalter. We even possess an illuminated manuscript, the Joshua Roll of the Vatican, executed in the sixth century, probably a copy of the earlier original, which unmistakably shows Joshua as a type of Christ. But already to TertullianTertullian this figurative relation was quite familiar: he explains it in the treatise Adv. Marcionem (3, 16), emphasizing the identity of the names Joshua and Jesus (cf. our note 9). IsidorusIsidor v. Sevilla gives a full description of the details, and his passage concerning Rahab,27 quoted by ToynbeeToynbee, P. and RostagnoRostagno, E., was reproduced or paraphrased many times during the Middle Ages, not only by Petrus ComestorPetrus Comestor in his Historia Scholastica, but also by another author familiar to DanteDante, Petrus DamianiPetrus Damiani,28 who plays a prominent part in the heaven of Saturn (Par. 21). All these ancient commentators say, with slight variations, that the house of Rahab alone with all its inhabitants escaped destruction just as the Church will alone be saved; and that she was freed from the ‘fornication of the world’ by the window of confession, in which she bound the scarlet thread, sanguinis Christi signum. Thus, she became figura ecclesiae, and the scarlet thread (just like the posts struck with the blood of the Lamb, Exod. 12) became a symbol of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice. The conception of Jericho as eternal perdition was supported by the parable from LukeLukas (Evangelist) 10, 30 (homo quidam descendebat ab Jerusalem in Jericho, et incidit in latrones …), generally interpreted as a figure of the fall of man. In the same way, the victory gained con l’una e l’altera palma seems to allude to the victory of Joshua won with outstretched hands (Exod. 17 with Jos. 8; cf. Sir. 46, 1–3), as a figure of the victory of Christ, whose hands were outstretched on the cross.