Abstract
The fourfold interpretation of Holy Writ or of other authoritative texts, through the technique of exegesis commonly known as allegorical interpretation, was a well known cultural phenomenon throughout the Middle Ages.3 The practice of allegorical interpretation itself was well developed in the Western world by the time of Plato,4 and the fourfold method may be regarded as a further refinement of this technique. It constituted a tradition of remarkable vitality: as late as the early fifteenth century we find Erasmus inveighing against its abuses in The Praise of Folly with as much emphasis as Dante had defended it in his famed letter to Can Grande in an earlier century. It was taught at the University of Paris during the Middle Ages5.
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