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The Church Fathers · c. 711–716
On the Song of Songs
The Venerable Bede · c. 673 – 735
What it is
Seven books on the Song, opening with an attack on Julian of Eclanum for reading it as a wedding poem, and closing with an anthology of Gregory the Great on the same text assembled so that readers without a library could still have him.
Why it lasted
The commentary that carried the nuptial reading into the medieval North, and an early instance of a scholar building a florilegium because the books he was quoting were unobtainable where his readers lived.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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