Centuries of Meditations

Varro, the most learned of the Romans, is cited at II.99 for his count of the philosophers’ opinions on happiness, and Gregory of Nazianzus, the fourth-century Greek bishop and theologian, is quoted at III.65 on goodness overflowing into creation. Aristotle is named at III.68 for his definition of felicity.

Pico della Mirandola, the Florentine philosopher, enters at IV.74, bringing with him Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary Egyptian sage, and Abdala the Saracen, an Arab authority otherwise unknown, as witnesses that man is the great miracle of the world.

The kings and conquerors of the exempla. Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, and his counsellor Cineas appear at I.22 in a story from Plutarch about the endless appetite for conquest, “like Pyrrhus, the King of Epire”, and Alexander the Great, who wept for more worlds, follows in the same meditation. Charles I is named at I.61 as a pupil of the Cross.

Amasis, king of Egypt, sends to the wise men of Greece at II.21 to ask what is most beautiful. Darius, king of Persia, appears at II.95 with his servant Zopyrus, the loyal friend “who cut off his nose and ears and lips” to win Babylon for his master.

Places

The book’s places are mostly the places of Scripture and of the soul, and it names few on the map, while its own places, the streets and the house of the author’s childhood, are never named at all.

Eden and Babel. Eden is present from I.7, where the world God made was “Adam’s joy and the Temple of his Glory” before the Fall, and the world men made stands against it as “a Babel of Confusions”, after the tower of Genesis. Eden is first named at I.36. Paradise, Eden’s other name, is used of the whole world as God gave it, “a very Paradise and the Gate of Heaven” (I.20).

Golgotha. Golgotha, the hill outside Jerusalem where Christ was crucified, is first a figure for a life without enjoyment, where others “live in a Golgotha or Prison” (I.36). At I.63 it is the place itself, “this Golgotha, or place of a skull”, where the prayers stand before the Cross.

Salem and the holy city. Salem is the old name of Jerusalem in the Psalms, and it is where the poem on David at III.69 opens, “In Salem dwelt a glorious King”. The heavenly city, the New Jerusalem of Revelation, appears earlier, at I.78, as the city the soul asks to enter.

The heavens. The heavens are the book’s widest place. At I.18 God made “the Heavens, and the Heavens of Heavens”, the visible sky and the dwelling of God beyond it, and the book asks its reader to wake each morning in heaven (I.28). God’s throne, the height to which enjoyment lifts the soul, is first named at I.6.

The places of the stories. Epirus, the kingdom of Pyrrhus in north-western Greece, enters at I.22, and Athens appears at I.40 as the scene of Socrates’ walk through “the Exchange at Athens”, Traherne’s London word for the Greek market. Babylon, the city Zopyrus won for Darius, is at II.95.

The author’s own places. The author’s places appear only in glimpses before the Third Century. The streets of his infancy, whose dust looked precious to him, are at I.25, and at I.80 author and friend are “at a hundred miles distance”, while at I.92 he borrows a psalm to say “I will leave my father’s house”. The Third Century shows, without naming it, a walled city whose “gates were at first the end of the world” (III.3), with its streets, its temple and its people.