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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
John Donne's “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward” is justly regarded as one of the finest devotional poems of the English Renaissance period. It is likewise significant for what it reveals about the theology of a major English poet and divine and, more broadly, for what it reveals about the spiritual psychology of his time. The personal nature of the poem, which was written during the troubled years before his ordination in 1615, underscores the force of its ideas for Donne. At the thematic center of the poem is a necessary connection between Godgiven corrective affliction and the sinful soul's turning to God.
1 “Holy Sonnet V,” 1.10 (ed. Gardner, Helen, John Donne: The Divine Poems; Oxford: Clarendon, 1952) 13Google Scholar. All quotations from Donne's poems are from this edition (see n. 57 below for explanation of the one exception), hereafter cited as Divine Poems. Grierson's numbering of the Holy Sonnets is used.
2 ”Holy Sonnet XIV,” 1.1; Divine Poems, 11.
3 ”Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward,” Divine Poems, 30–31.
4 For a substantial discussion of this paradox, see Chambers, A. B., “‘Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward’: the Poem and the Tradition,” ELH 28 (1961) 50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing, in which Beatrice and Benedick must change to unite, is one interesting example. Shakespeare toys with the notion throughout the play. Advised that Beatrice loves him, Benedick finds himself “converted” and his perception changed (2.3.21). Margaret derides a similarly radical change in Beatrice, now “turned Turk” (3.4.55). Earlier, Beatrice says Benedick's presence makes courtesy “convert to Disdain,” making it a “turncoat,” Benedick counters (1.1.119–21). The examples multiply.
6 See Halewood, William H., The Poetry of Grace (New Haven/London: Yale University, 1970) 67Google Scholar: “Conversion is the device in Reformation theology for ending the rebellion of the self and bringing man into harmonious relation with God.”
7 The Sermons of John Donne, eds. Potter, George R. and Simpson, Evelyn M. (2d ed.; Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California, 1962)Google Scholar. All citations from the sermons are from this edition, cited as Sermons and, with appropriate volume and page number, given parenthetically within the text.
8 Taylor, Jeremy, Unum Necessarium, or the Doctrine and Practice of Repentance in The Whole Works, 7 (London, 1865) 2.1.4.Google Scholar
9 Taylor, Unum Necessarium, 2.1.10.
10 Breward, Ian, “Introduction,” in Perkins, William, The Work (Berkshire, England: Sutton Courtenay, 1970) 109Google Scholar.
11 See Haller, William, The Rise of Puritanism (New York: Harper, 1957) 64Google Scholar: “Tradition later invested his youth with the customary legend of wickedness before conversion. He was, it was remembered, profane, reckless and addicted to drink down to the day he heard a woman in the street say to her fretful child, ‘Hold your tongue, or I will give you to drunken Perkins yonder’“; cf. Breward, “Introduction,” in William Perkins, The Work, 6.
12 Calvin, John, “To the Reader” in Commentaries on the Psalms of David and Others (trans. Golding, Arthur; London, 1571)Google Scholar: “And so it came to passe, that I being called back from the study of Philosophie, was set to learn the law. Whereunto albeit I endeured to apply my self faithfully for satisfiing of my father's will: yit God with that secret bridle of his prouidence, did at length turn my race ageine the other way. And whereas at the first I was more stifly addicted to superstitions of the Papistrie, than that I might with ease be drawn out of so deep a puddle: he sodenly turned my mind (which for my yeeres was ouer much hardened and made it easie to be taught. Therefore being touched with some taste of true godlines, I burned with so great a desire to profiting: that although I did not quite giue ouer all other studies, yit I folowed them more coldly.”
13 Wendel, François, Calvin: Sources et Evolution desa Pensée Religieuse (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1950) 142Google Scholar.
14 Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973) 2.3.8; 2.30Google Scholar.
15 Calvin, Institutes, 3.3.5; bracketed Latin is from Joannis Calvini Opera, 2, in Corpus Reformatorum, 30.
16 Calvin, Institutes, 2.3.6.
17 Augustine, Confessions, 2.1; bracketed Latin is from PL, 32. 675.
18 Augustine, Confessions, 8.5.10; PL, 32. 753.
19 Augustine, Confessions, 8.12.30; PL, 32. 762.
20 Augustine, On Free Will, 30.1.2; PL, 32. 1272.
21 Friedman, Donald M., “Memory and the Art of Salvation in Donne's Good Friday Poem,” ELR 3 (1973) 418–42Google Scholar.
22 One ready way of measuring Bernard's influence on Donne is to compare index references to Bernard in the Potter and Simpson edition of the sermons with entries for other writers in Mrs. Simpson's table “References to the Fathers,” Sermons, X. 347. The comparison suggests that only Augustine had markedly more influence on Donne than did Bernard and a few others.
23 Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum, 93.18; PL, 37. 1206.
24 Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum, 44.17; PL, 36. 503–4.
25 Bernard, , Eighty-Six Sermons on the Song of Solomon, in Life and Works, IV (London, 1896) 26.5, p. 237Google Scholar; PL, 187. 970.
26 Bernard, Song of Solomon, 83.2–3, p. 508; PL, 187. 1182.
27 One of Calvin's variations on the theme of bending in conversion depicts God's role: “God begins his good work in us therefore by arousing love and desire and zeal for righteousness in our hearts; or, to speak more correctly, by bending, forming, and directing, our hearts to righteousness” (Institutes, 2.3.6); elsewhere, in a letter, he says: “We are so utterly mastered under the power of sin that our whole mind, heart, and all our actions bend towards sin.” This passage is quoted in Davies, Horton, Worship and Theology in England: from Cranmer to Hooker, 1534–1603 (Princeton: Princeton University, 1970) 54–55Google Scholar.
28 That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee, ‘and bend
Your force, to break, blowe, burn and make me new
(“Holy Sonnet XIV,” 11.3–4)
The position of “bend” enables it to act on both “mee” in 1.3 and “Your force” in 1.4, with the meaning shifting in 1.4 accordingly.
29 Cf. Sermons, II. 87.
30 Bernard, Song of Solomon, 42.4, p. 261; PL, 183. 989.
31 Bernard, Song of Solomon, 49.6, p. 424; PL, 183. 1115.
32 Augustine, Expositions on the Book of Psalms, IV (Oxford, 1850) 94.18, p. 367.
33 Bernard, Song of Solomon, 21.10–11, p. 122.
34 John Downame, The Christian Warfare (London, 1613) 3.2.23.2.
35 Downame, The Christian Warfare, 3.2.23.6; also, cf. the following: “For as afflictions doe notably helpe forward our effectual callings and first conversion unto God, so do they much further our repentance, and provoke us continually to renew the act thereof after our many relapses and daily slips into sin. And when having resolved to walke in the way of holinesse and righteousnesse towards our heavenly home, wee are in our passage allured to turne out of the right path into the by-wayes of sin and wickedness by having the baites of worldly vanities set before us, the Lord casteth into our way these Thornes and Bryars of Affliction and tribulation making thereby our wandring and digressing so distasteful and unpleasant, that we are never at rest untill we be returned by repentance into the right way again” (3.2.23.1).
36 Sibbes, Richard, The Christian Work, in Works (Edinburgh, 1863) V. 26Google Scholar.
37 Sibbes, The Saints Refreshing, in Works, 84.
38 Pettit, Norman, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life (New Haven/London: Yale University, 1966) 1–85Google Scholar.
39 Pettit, The Heart Prepared, 25.
40 Friedman, “Donne's Good Friday Poem,” 439.
41 Donne, The Divine Poems, 28; cf. Augustine, Confessions, 8.5.10; PL, 32.753: “which thing I was sighing for, bound as I was, not with another's irons, but by my own iron will [ferrea voluntate].”
42 This often used image goes at least as far back as De Virginitate by Gregory of Nyssa, written before he became a bishop in 371 (Augustine's first work is thought to have been written in 386). See the following in Ladner, Gerhard B., The Idea of Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (New York/London: Harper & Row. 1967) 92Google Scholar: “‘The godlike beauty of the soul, made in imitation of its prototype,’ namely God, is now like ‘iron blackened by the rust of evil.’“Cf. Bernard, Sermones in Cantica, 57.8: “Porro hoc igne consumpta omni labe peccati, et rubigine vitiorum.…” Also, cf. Downame's discussion of sinners used by God to afflict the righteous (The Christian Warfare, 3.2.6.3): “Whilest they seeme to insult and tyrannize over them, being used by God as bugbeares to make his children to flee unto him as fires to purifie them from their drosse; as files to scower them from the rust of their corruptions, and as rods to correct their faults, and to reclaime and amend them for the time to come.”
43 Friedman, “Donne's Good Friday Poem,” 420–37.
44 Schleiner, Winfried, The Imagery of Donne's Sermons (Providence, RI: Brown University, 1970) 137Google Scholar. Schleiner suggests that Donne's imagery relating to eyes is strongly influenced by Bernard.
45 For a discussion of this notion in Donne's sermons, see Sermons, V. 276; VI. 286.
46 See Grant, Patrick, The Transformation of Sin (Montreal/London: McGill-Queen's University; Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1974) 40–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47 Raby, F. J. E., A History of Christian-Latin Poetry from the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953) 441Google Scholar.
48 Quoted in Jeffrey, David L., The Early English Lyric and Franciscan Spirituality (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1975) 31Google Scholar.
49 See Raby, A History of Christian-Latin Poetry, 419, n. 2; Jeffrey, The Early English Lyric, 30–31, 50, 57,88.
50 As background for these lines, Jeffrey (The Early English Lyric, 32) draws attention to Bernard's commentary on John 10:27–28 (“My sheep hear my voice and I the Lord acknowledge them, and they follow me; and I give to them eternal life”).
The word agnoscere itself allows for varying thematic resonances. See Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968) 87Google Scholar. Among the meanings for agnosco are: “To recognize (by sight, mental apprehension, etc.), know again, identify … to recognize (a person or thing as having a specific attribute, status, etc.)”; “to acknowledge as one's own”; “to recognize the credentials or reliability of (a person), believe in”; “to acknowledge the presence of, greet.”
51 Unlike Donne, Bernard distinguishes between “image” and “likeness” in the biblical affirmation that man was made “to His image and likeness”(Gen 1:26). The image refers to the essential powers of the soul; the likeness, to the accidental ability to use these powers without impediment (see Gilson, Etienne, The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard [London, 1955] 46–53Google Scholar). Donne views the terms to be” illustration of one another … to be all one” (Sermons, IX. 73).
52 Bernard, Song of Solomon, 83.1; PL, 183. 1181.
53 Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, 99.
54 Bernard, Song of Solomon, 82.8; PL, 182. 1181.
55 Bernard, , The Steps of Humility (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1940) 3.6Google Scholar; PL, 182. 945.
56 Bernard, The Steps of Humility, 3.7; PL 182. 945.
57 Grierson and Smith adopt “turne”; Gardner, “tune.” Despite this minor textual skirmish among Donne editors regarding those Donne manuscripts which read “tune” versus those which read “turne,” there is little doubt that, in either case, Donne intends to depict Christ as the hand that creates and maintains the universe, the Logos, instrument of creation, and principle of order. Given the other “turns” in “Good Friday” and given the Augustinian influence (see nn. 60–61 below) strengthening the poem, “turne” is more consistent. We can at least assume as did Grierson when put to defend “turne,” that it would be implicit in “tune” anyway (see Gardner, The Divine Poems, 99, for the details of the disagreement). Since, as Gardner herself notes, “authority is evenly divided on the matter,” and since “turne” is more broadly consistent with the poem, Grierson was probably right to begin with.
58 Donne, John, The Complete English Poems (ed. Smith, A. J.; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) 654Google Scholar, n. 22.
59 The following examples are from The Geneva Bible: “Take vnto you wordes, and turne to the Lord, and say vnto him, Take away all iniquitie, and receiue vs graciously: so wil we render the calues of our lippes … I will heale their rebellion: I wil loue them frely: for mine anger is turned away from them” (Hos 14:2,4). “Therefore say thou vnto them, Thus saith the Lord of hostes, Turne ye vnto me, saith the Lord of hostes, & I will turne vnto to you, saith the Lord of hostes” (Zech 1:3).
60 Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, 1.3.7; PL, 34. 248–49.
61 Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, 1.4.9; PL, 34. 249.