Four senses of Scripture

[2] In the 3rd century, the theologian Origen, a graduate of Catechetical School of Alexandria, formulated the principle of the three senses of Scripture (literal, moral, and spiritual) from the Jewish method of interpretation used by Saint Paul in Epistle to the Galatians chapter 4.

Still, we know they handed down the inclination to express learned material in allegorical form, mainly through personification, which later became a standard part of medieval schooling methods.

[6] Claudian's first work In Rufinum attacked the ruthless Rufinus and would become a model for the 12th century Anticlaudianus, a well-known allegory for how to be an upstanding man.

[6] Martianus Capella wrote De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ("Marriage of Philology and Mercury"), the title referring to the allegorical union of intelligent learning with the love of letters.

It contained short treatises on the "seven liberal arts" (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music) and thus became a standard textbook, greatly influencing educators and students throughout the Middle Ages.

[6] Works during the Middle Ages included Hugh of St Victor (Didascalicon, 1125[citation needed]), Bernard Silvestris (Cosmographia, 1147), and Alanus ab Insulis (Plaint of Nature, 1170, and Anticlaudianus) who pioneered the use of allegory (mainly personification) for abstract speculation on metaphysics and scientific questions.

There were four great works from this period:[6] For most medieval thinkers there were four categories of interpretation (or meaning) used in the Middle Ages, which had originated with the Bible commentators of the early Christian era.

[6] For example, with the Sermon on the Mount[10][11] Dante describes interpreting through a "four-fold method" (or "allegory of the theologians") in his epistle to Can Grande Della Scala.

Now if we examine the letters alone, the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt in the time of Moses is signified; in the allegory, our redemption is accomplished through Christ; in the moral sense, the conversion of the soul from the grief and misery of sin to the state of grace; in the anagogical sense, the exodus of the holy soul from slavery of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory.. they can all be called symbolic.The classic summary of fourfold exegesis is the following Latin doggerel verse, a widely known mnemonic device in medieval schools:[12]

Medieval philosophers also saw allegory in the natural world, interpreting animals, plants, and even non-living things in books called bestiaries as symbols of Biblical figures and morals.