Marriage

Use in the book

The divorce question is compared with a state’s ability to repudiate governments, but the objection about determining public will trails off. The funeral note uses “it is their wedding” to explain bells and pomp for young people who died early; it does not say they had married. The application contrasting continence for those destined to marriage with marriage for those destined to chastity applies the preceding reported saying that God hates the peace of those destined for war. Continence and chastity remain distinct; the application is not a free-standing rule.

Places to read

1. I, p. 304, entry 4, ¶1Divorce supplies a comparison for changing governments.
2. II, p. 481, entry 5, ¶1Funeral pomp is excused through wedding language.
3. II, p. 819, entry begun p. 818, no. 8, ¶2Marriage and chastity appear as contrasted destinations in an application.

Translation in this edition

The English translation uses wedding for the funeral saying and marriage elsewhere. Singular “their” avoids assigning a gender to the deceased individual. “Repudiate” preserves the political/marital overlap, and the unfinished comparison remains unfinished.

Use in the book

III.77 interprets the wedding as the relation between Christ and the Church. The bride leaves familiar country and inherited customs to enter the king’s palace, which Traherne expands into the entire world. Renunciation is answered by an enlarged habitation and a more glorious relationship.

The image then moves between the Church and each soul. Every soul joined to Christ can regard the saints as its own children and deepest relations. Marriage therefore figures a communion that generates wider belonging rather than an enclosed pair. The psalmist can enjoy bride, bridegroom, and palace together as a true possession.

Places to read

1. III.77Psalmic royal marriage becomes Christ’s union with the Church and the soul’s relation to the saints.

In this edition

This occurrence is an explicitly allegorical exposition. Its instructions concern spiritual allegiance and communion, not a general set of rules for ordinary marriages.

Use in the book

René addresses Amélie as the chaste bride of Jesus Christ immediately after hearing her forbidden passion disclosed (p. 181). The address both acknowledges the religious relation intended to supersede that passion and accompanies his own last embrace. Its force comes from the simultaneous assertion of separation and physical attempt to cross it. Because the words are René’s exclamation, they do not by themselves describe the completed inner state of the sister.

Her later letter speaks more directly from within the new life. Religion substitutes a burning chastity in which lover and virgin are united, purifies sighs, and changes a perishable flame into an imperishable one (pp. 185–1862). The transformation preserves intensity rather than merely subtracting feeling. At the same time, she acknowledges a remainder of disturbance and sensuality in a heart seeking rest. The idiom is gradual and mixed; it is not the vocabulary of instant emotional extinction.

The letter also calls this action a gentle deception of the sensitive soul. That expression links religious consolation to the work’s wider interest in how images, habits, and rituals redirect desire. It need not mean that Amélie declares faith false. Rather, the phrasing stresses the indirect and accommodating means by which consolation works upon someone who cannot simply command her feelings to vanish.

The first letter supplies a less settled counterpart. Amélie imagines a wife devoted wholly to René, then tells him he would think he had found another sister (p. 171). That fantasy confuses relations at the very point where she proposes a socially permitted marriage. The later sacred marriage seeks a different organization of love, but the text does not ask readers to forget the cost or the traces of earlier feeling. Finally, the superior’s report adds service to the imagery. Amélie’s relation to God is represented through charity toward companions as well as through bridal and fiery figures. Any account that dwells only on erotic sublimation would miss the narrative’s movement from intense language to sustained action.

Places to read

1. p. 181Chaste épouse de Jésus-Christ — René’s exclamation identifies the sacred bridal relation at the moment of his embrace.
2. p. 186une sorte de chasteté brûlante — Amélie’s own later letter describes transformed intensity.
3. p. 186où l'amante et la vierge sont unies — The metaphor brings together roles that ordinary categories separate.
4. p. 186une flamme incorruptible une flamme périssable — The transfer changes the flame’s condition rather than eliminating it.
5. p. 186ce reste de trouble — The letter acknowledges an affective remainder.

Translation in this edition

The anonymous English preserves “burning chastity,” “lover,” and “virgin.” Its choice “bride” for épouse in p. 181 captures the consecration metaphor, whereas the same French noun in the outer frame denotes René’s human wife.