WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

CHAPTER I
COLONIAL HERMENEUTICS: INFIDEL UNIVERSALITY AND THE WRITING OF
SOVEREIGNTY
No, but even when the scene is not formalized in this way by an institutional code of positive law that would oblige
us to observe this or that rite, there is in all testimony an implication of oath and of law. This extension of the oath’s
implication may appear extraordinary and abusive, even extravagant, but I believe it to be legitimate, I will even say
incontestable. Logically, it obliges one to take any address to another to be a testimony. Each time I speak or
manifest something to another, I bear witness to the extent that, even if I neither say nor show the truth, even if,
behind the “mask,” I am lying, hiding, or betraying, every utterance implies “I am telling you the truth”…And I can
always be lying to you. 19 —Jacques Derrida.
Hanc per elementa iurandi pessimam consuetudinem semper habuere Judaei noscuntur sicut prophetalis eos
frequenter arguit sermo. Qui iurat aut venerator aut diligit eum per quem iurat…sic et iurare permitterentur in Deum:
non quod recte hoc facerent, sed quod melius esset Deo id exhibere, quam daemonibus. Evangelica autem veritas
non recipit iuramentum, cum omnis sermo fidelis pro iure iurando sit.
The Jews are always known to have this terrible custom of swearing by the elements as prophetic speech frequently
berates them for doing. Whoever swears either worships or loves that by which he swears…and in this they were
permitted to swear in [the name of] God: not because they do this rightly, but because it is better to exhibit [worship]
to God than to the demons. However, evangelic truth does not approve of swearing because all faithful speech is just
as an oath. 20 —Jerome.
As Jerome’s Commentary on Matthew suggests, Christian exegesis carried political
implications because Christianity understands discourse as a type of oath-making. The practices
involved in the act of biblical interpretation, then, were inherently ways to shape living practices
and not just ways to understand ideas. For example, in his commentary in the Gospel According
to Luke, Bede writes that, through the interpretative process, God “nos docet verbo auscultare
quatenus et nostro illud pectore continue ruminare et alieno ructare sufficiamus auditui” ‘teaches
us to listen to his word, that we may constantly substitute it both to ruminate it in our breast and
to vomit it for another hearing.’ 21 When we listen and repeat God’s word, we both digest it for
our nourishment and present it in another form for the ethical and spiritual growth of another.
19
Jacques Derrida, Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Célan, ed. Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2005) 87.
20
Jerome “Commentariorum In Evangelium Matthaei Libri Quattuor,” Patrologia Latina, ed. J.P. Migne
(Ridgewood: Gregg Press, 1965) 40.
21
Bede, “In Evangelium Lucae exposition,” Corpus Christianorum Series Latinam, ed. D. Hurst, vol. 120
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1960) 177.
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