Number Theory in George Herbert's "Trinity Sunday" and "Trinitie Sunday"

Abstract

Number Theory in George Herbert's Trinity Sunday" and "Trinitie Sunday" by David Ormerod Despite the fact that George Herbert was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, the doctrine of the Trinity does not seem to have been of any great literary or devotional interest to the poet. He employs it to some effect in "The Starre" and "Ungratefulnesse," but his only other recourse to it, in the poems "Trinity Sunday" and "Trinitie Sunday," has elicited little critical interest, and that somewhat censorious in nature. "Trinity" is from the Williams MS, and, together with five other poems, was excluded from the Bodleian MS and hence from the printed text of The Temple.' It is usually assumed by critics who like their poems to be simple, sensuous, and passionate, that "Trinity" was discarded by Herbert in favor of "Trinitie" because he was dissatisfied with it, but this may well be a post hoc rationalization.2 "Trinitie Sunday" is self-evidently a poem about triads: Lord, who hast form'd me out of mud. And hast redeem'd me through thy bloud, And sanctifi'd me to do good; Purge all my sinnes done heretofore: For I confesse my heavie score, And I will strive to sinne no more. Enrich my heart, mouth, hands in me, With faith, with hope, with charitie; That I may runne, rise, rest with thee. There are three stanzas, each of three lines, but each stanza contains only one rhyme word, so that each triplet/ stanza provides, as it were, a hieroglyph of the God who is simultaneously three persons in one.3 The first two stanzas contain one entity per line; the last stanza contains three 28David Ormerod entities in each of the three lines. In the first stanza the triune God performs three actions — one per Person. The Father creates man ("form'd me out of mud"), the Son redeems man ("redeem'd me through thy bloud"), the Holy Spirit sanctifies man ("sanctifi'd me to do good"). These are God's works to man, but the latter, of course, is an ingrate, and must repent and constantly beg renewal. The second stanza, in a mode still familiarto those with a Catholic upbringing, indicates that God will absolve man of his sins ("purge all my sinnes done heretofore") committed in the past, as man (in the present) punningly confesses ("confesse my heavie score"), and man will make a good resolution for the future ("strive to sinne no more," the "firm purpose of amendment" of the Penance ritual). The three actions of the second stanza are presumably to be paralleled with the three divine functions of the first stanza. Several commonplace medieval images for the Trinity are perhaps relevant at this point. Just as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are principles in the macrocosm, so they have their appropriate regents in the little world of man, the microcosm. Attempts to locate a parallel Trinity in man's own soul (e.g., memory, understanding and will) usually originate with St. Augustine's De Trinitate. Three is paradoxically, therefore, the number of unity. It is the first real number and is the first figure in plane geometry (i.e., the triangle). The solid three (i.e., the three-sided pyramid) is the basic building block of the cosmos, as Plato indicates passim in the Timaeus. Very importantly, three is the number of the circle and, by extension, the three dimensional circle, the sphere, because it was deemed to encompass line (circumference), space, and point (the center). Circle and sphere, of course, have been figures of perfection and eternity since this symbology was first elaborated by Plato through the medium of Aristophanes' speech in the Symposium , 1 89d-193c. In addition, three is the number of time (past, present, future); hence its importance in Shakespeare's Macbeth, where it can be associated with Petrarch's hieroglyphic tricephalos as we encounter it in Valeriano and the sixteenth-century manuals of mythography.4 "Trinitie Sunday" is suffused with these numerological commonplaces. The first line of stanza three gives us the triad of heart, mouth and hands. In the heart (I. 2) is faith, in the mouth is the message of...