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We use the word figure in many ways. We speak of figure-skating, of cutting a figure, of a fine figure of a man, the fuller figure, a figure of fun, figuring things out, figures of speech and being good with with figures. These are all current senses. In the past, figure has had other meanings. When, in The Merry Wives of Windsor Mistress Ford encourages Mistress Page to ‘scrape the figures out of your husband’s brains’, she does not mean that he has been worrying about the mortgage, but that his head is full of mistaken ideas or fantasies.
Figure comes from the Latin figura. In 1944 the German literary critic Erich Auerbach published an influential article entitled Figura. He showed the wide range of meanings that figura has in classical Latin, and how these developed further in Christian usage. Fran the earliest records, figura could mean ‘the shape of a thing’, just as we now speak of a person’s ‘figure’. But it could also mean a shape representing something else. Sculptors, for instance, make figurae of human beings; in our dreams we see figurae of people who are dead.
Christian writers developed this second sense in a new and important way. For them, figura could refer to an object or event belonging to a particular point in time that represented something in the future. For Tertullian, Isaac, Joseph, Moses are all figurae of Christ2; the marriage of Adam and Eve is a figura of Christ and the Church3 (Theologians are familiar with this way of looking at history, though we usually call it by a word of Greek origin, typology.)
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- Copyright © 1996 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Auerbach. Erich. ‘Figura’ in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature , with an introduction by Paolo Valesio. 11–76. Theory and History of Literature. vol. 9. Manchester, England Manchester University Press, 1984.
2 Adversus Marcionem 3, 18, 2-7;
3 Adversus Marcionem 5, 18, 10.
4 Adversus Marcionem 5, 19, 9.
5 De Isaac vel Anima 4, 22
6 Op.cit pp.55–56.
7 Rom 5:12ff; 1 Cor 10:6;11; 15:21; 2 Cor 3:14; Gal 4:21–31; Col 2:16–17.
8 PL 121, 125–170.
9 Adversus Marcionem 3, 19, 4.
10 Adversus Marcionem 4, 40, 3.
11 De Corpore et sanguine Domini 4, 2 (PL 120, 1279).
12 De Corpore et Sanguine Domini 6; 14 (PL 150, 416c; 424b).
13 Canon 1 on the Eucharist: D.-S. 1651.
14 Ad Martyras 3, 1.
15 Adversus ludaeos 13.
16 Adversus Marcionem 3, 16, 5.
17 De Civitate Dei 10, 5.
18 ipsius venerabilis sacramenti... exordium
19 S. Th IIIa q60 a3c
20 Apoc 17:7: sacramentum mulieris
21 In Latin, eos peculiari ditat et roborat Sacramento, quos ipse sancto iam Baptismate consecravit.
22 Deus, qui tam excellenti mysterio coniugalem copulam consecrasti,
ut Christi et Ecclesiae sacramentum
praesignares in foedere nupliarum...
23 Sacrosanctum Concilium 78.
24 The Anglican translation from 1549 onwards was ‘the spiritual marriage and unity betwixt Christ and his Church’; the Alternative Service Book translates ‘the marriage of Christ with his Church’.
25 Deus, qui ad amoris tui consilium revelandum,
in mutua dilectione sponsorum
foedus illud adumbrari voluisti
quod ipse cum populo tuo inire dignatus es,
ut, sacramenti significatione completa,
in fidelium tuorum coniugali consortio
Christi et Ecclesiae nuptiale pateret mysterium...
26 Qui foedera nuptiarum blando concordiae iugo
et insolubili pacis vinculo nexuisti. ..
27 Benedictionem nobis, Domine, conferat salutarem
sacra semper ablatio ...
28 tibi, Domine, panem vitae
et calicem salutis offerimus...
29 Domini nostri lesu Christi, cuius
mandato haec mysteria celebramus.
30 NJB and RNEB have ‘there is the Lamb . . .’; NRSV has ‘here is . . . ’; New American Bible has ‘Behold...’
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