The Monk

NOTES

1. Horat.: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 B.C.-8 B.C.), Epistles II.ii, 208–209.

PREFACE

1. Imitation of Horace, Epistles I.xx.

2. row called Paternoster: Paternoster Row was a street in London, named for the makers of rosaries (paternosters) who inhabited it during the medieval period. In Lewis’s day, it was the site of numerous booksellers.

3. olio: collection of literary works; miscellany.

4. Stockdale, Hookham, or Debrett: well-known booksellers.

5. chimara: something nonexistent; a product of the imagination.

6. George the Third: George III (1738–1820), king of Great Britain and Ireland between 1760 and 1820. Lewis turned twenty in July 1795. Hague: city in the Netherlands where Lewis was living when he completed the novel.

ADVERTISEMENT

1. the story of the Santon Barsisa, related in The Guardian: The Guardian was a periodical published by Richard Steele between March and October of 1713. In issue number 148, August 31, 1713, Steele published “The History of Santon Barsisa,” a story of an Eastern holy man who succumbs to the temptations of the devil, seduces and kills a maiden, then unsuccessfully attempts to bargain with the devil to escape punishment. Bleeding Nun: The story of the Bleeding Nun appears in Die Volksmärchen der Deutschen (1782–86), collected by Johann Karl August Musäus (1735–87).

VOLUME I

CHAPTER 1

1. Epigraph: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure I.iii.50–53. Angelo pretends to be morally upright and virtuous, but lays plans to seduce a young woman who pleads for the life of her brother, whom Angelo has sentenced to death upon charges of sexual licentiousness (invoking severe laws that had fallen into disuse).

2. Capuchins: Friars of the Franciscan order, their name was derived from the pointed hoods, or capuches, that they wore. It was customary at the time Lewis was writing to regard friars as a class of monks and to use the terms friar and monk interchangeably.

3. St. Francis … St. Mark … St. Agatha: St. Francis of Assisi founded the Franciscan orders and is the patron saint of animals and nature; St. Mark was the author of the second Gospel in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. St. Agatha was a Sicilian martyr. She took a vow of chastity and was persecuted by a high-ranking official, who had her arrested on charges of Christianity in order to try to force her to become his mistress; he imprisoned her in a brothel, then in jail, and ultimately had her tortured to death.

4. Segnora: Lewis’s spelling of señora, the Spanish word for married woman, or madam. Similarly, he uses segnor in place of señor, Spanish for man or sir.

5. Medicean Venus: The Venus of Medici is a famous statue of the Roman goddess of love that was commissioned by the Medici family, rulers of Renaissance Florence and influential patrons of the arts. L. 10 Hamadryad: a wood nymph.

6. chaplet: a string of beads for prayer counting, one-third the size of a rosary.

7. Murcia: a southern Spanish province.

8. St. Barbara: a fourth-century martyr, secluded in a tower by her heathen father and later denounced and put to death at his hands for her devotion to Christianity.

9. seraph: Seraphs are members of the highest order of the nine orders of angels.

10. mauvaise honte: French expression, meaning “false shame” or “shyness.”

11. Cordova: Cordoba, a city in the south of Spain.

12. condé: Spanish, count.

13. watching: sustained, late-night religious vigils.

14. peccadilloes: venial sins, minor faults.

15. Diavolo: Italian, devil.

16. the Prado: a promenade in Madrid.

17. parlour-grate: a screen through which cloistered nuns were able to speak with visitors from the outside world. pistoles: Spanish gold coins.

18. St. Jago: St. James, one of the Apostles, who was reputed to have evangelized Spain.

19. Mount Ætna: volcano in Sicily.

20. vespers: evening prayer service.

21. St. Clare: an Italian noblewoman who dedicated herself to following in St. Francis’s footsteps and founded an order of nuns.

22. Mahomet: eighteenth-century spelling of the name of the founder of Islam, Muhammad.

23. hotel: large mansion, or palace.

24. phœnix: a paragon, an exceptional individual. From the name of a mythical bird of which only one was believed to exist at a time.

25. glasses: mirrors. p. 25, philtre: magic potion.

CHAPTER II

1. Epigraph: Torquato Tasso (1544–95), L’Aminta I.i.26–31.

2. equipage: carriage, horses, and attendants.

3. jessamine: jasmine.

4. ennui: lack of interest, deep boredom.

5. poniard: dagger.

6. instances: entreaties.

7. Estramadura: a region southwest of Madrid.

8. cientipedoro: a poisonous centipede.

9. the famous battle of Roncevalles: As recounted in the twelfth-century French epic The Song of Roland, Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees was the site of Roland’s defeat at the hands of the Saracens. Lewis apparently conflated the name of Roland’s sword, Durandal, with that of Durandarte. The story of Durandarte and Belerma appears in Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, vol. II, ch. 23.

10. brand: sword.

11. glaive: lance or spear.

12. Martin Galuppi: not a historical figure.

13. St. Anthony: St. Anthony went to live in the deserts of Egypt and became an ascetic after struggling with and succeeding in warding off a series of temptations by the devil.

CHAPTER III

1. Epigraph: Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona IV.i.5–6 and 44–6. Line 44 is modified, “them” being substituted for “us.” The villains under discussion are highway robbers whom one of the protagonists is in the process of joining.

2. Lindenberg: a town in Germany.

3. Hispaniola: an island in the Caribbean. It now comprises the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

4. Salamanca: a university town in Spain.

5. chaise: a closed carriage for one to three passengers.

6. postillion: a person who rides one of the horses that accompany a carriage on a journey.

7. banditti: Italian, bandits.

8. Bavaria: a region in the south of Germany.

VOLUME II

CHAPTER IV

1. Epigraph: Shakespeare, Macbeth III.iv.93–96 and 106–7. Macbeth addresses the ghost of Banquo.

2. “Perceforest,” “Tirante the White,” “Palmerin of England,” and “the Knight of the Sun”: chivalric prose romances of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries.

3. “the Loves of Tristan and the Queen Iseult———”: another romance, based upon the tragic history of two lovers that forms part of the Arthurian saga.

4. paternoster: Latin, our father. the Lord’s Prayer.

5. De profundis: “Out of the depths,” the first words of the Latin version of Psalm 130; a prayer of penitence or despair.

6. duenna: an older woman who chaperones a younger woman.

7. corse: corpse.

8. the Great Mogul: chief of the Mogul Empire of the Indian subcontinent.

9. Doctor Faustus: legendary medieval figure who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a period of unlimited power and was eventually dragged down to hell. The playwright Christopher Marlowe (1564–93) adapted the legend in The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (published in 1604), and it also formed the basis for Goethe’s Faust, begun in 1770 and completed in 1832.

10. the wandering Jew: Many different legends exist about this figure, who was said to have been present when Jesus Christ was on his way to be crucified. In the most common version, the Jewish man tells Jesus to move more quickly, and as punishment is told that he will have to remain in motion until the Second Coming.

11. the Inquisition: the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical tribunal, first organized under the jurisdiction of a central governing body in Rome during the thirteenth century, and responsible for the trial and punishment of heretics. The Spanish Inquisition of the fifteenth century was particularly brutal in its methods of torturing accused individuals.

12. bull: a mandate from the Pope.

CHAPTER V

1. Epigraph: Alexander Pope (1688–1744), The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated; To Augustus 296–301. In L. 301, “or” has been changed to “and,” stressing the inevitability of a fall for the individual who “pants for glory.”

2. Anacreon: Greek lyric poet, c. 570 B.C.-c. 485 B.C.

3. Sylvans and fauns: mythological beings: sylvans are forest spirits, and fauns are part man, part goat.

4. Phœbus: Apollo, the sun god, patron of poetry, music, and healing.

5. the blue-eyed maid: Athena, virgin goddess of wisdom and of the arts and sciences, who sprang from the head of Zeus.

6. Lope de Vega: Félix Lope de Vega Carpio (1562–1635), a Spanish dramatic poet.

7. Calderona: Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681), a major dramatist of the Spanish Golden Age.

8. “Montemayor’s Diana”: Diana Enamorada (1542), a Spanish pastoral romance published by the Portuguese writer and poet Jorge de Montemayor (c. 1521–61).

CHAPTER VI

1. Epigraph: Nathaniel Lee (?1749–92), Sofanisba (1676), I.i.240–41, slightly modified.

2. syren: siren, a type of monster—half bird, half woman—that lured sailors to their deaths by singing irresistible melodies.

3. “That men … how”: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure II.ii.187, adapted from a first-person speech, “When men were fond, I smiled and wondered how.”

4. strada: Italian, street.

5. Indies: refers to the East or West Indies, synonymous here with wealth and profit.

6. willow: The willow is a symbol for grief over unrequited love or the loss of a loved one.

7. “Of lonely haunts … loves!”: William Strode (1602–45), Melancholly I.12–13. The original reads, “Fountains heads, and pathlesse groves,/Places which pale Passion loves.”

8. St. Rosolia: There is a St. Rosalia, a Sicilian woman who retired from the world to live as an ascetic, first in a cave and then on Mount Pellegrino.

CHAPTER VII

1. Epigraph: Robert Blair (1699–1746), The Grave II.11–20.

2. “Amadis de Gaul”: a Spanish or Portuguese chivalric prose romance, dating from the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Don Galaor is Amadis’s brother.

3. Damsel Plazer di mi vida: a character in Tirante the White.

4. confident: confidant.

5. agnus dei: Latin, Lamb of God. a cake of wax stamped with the image of a lamb and blessed by the Pope.

6. constellated: framed under particular constellations to have certain magical properties; charmed.

VOLUME III

CHAPTER VIII

1. Epigraph: Shakespeare, Cymbeline II.ii.11–16. Tarquin is the Roman who raped Lucretia; Cytherea is another name for Venus.

2. Proteus: a sea god, capable of assuming any shape.

3. “By anthropophagi … shoulders”: Shakespeare, Othello I.iii.144–45. Othello tells Desdemona fantastic tales of his travels and adventures. Anthropophagi are cannibals.

4. Terra Incognita: Latin, land unknown.

5. Hottentot: a term applied to Africans, especially those in the region of South Africa.

6. Silesia: a region in central Europe, now in southern Poland.

7. Loretto: a well-known pilgrimage destination in Italy with a shrine to the Virgin Mary.

8. discovered by a minstrel: According to legend, the minstrel Blondel de Nesle helped rescue his patron, Richard the Lionheart, from the cell in which Leopold of Austria had imprisoned him by wandering through Germany and singing a song known only to Richard and Blondel. When Blondel heard Richard’s response, the troubadour alerted English troops to Richard’s whereabouts.

9. symphony: an instrumental prelude or introduction.

10. The Water-King: based on Der Wassermann, by the German philosopher, critic, and collector of folk songs Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803).

11. housings: cloths put on a horse for defense or decoration.

12. St. Genevieve: Patron saint of Paris, she was distinguished from an early age as a holy figure and was credited with saving the city from the invasion of Attila in the fifth century.

13. I doubt they are murderers: “Doubt” is used in the archaic sense here; the meaning is “I fear they are murderers” (not “I don’t think that they are murderers”).

CHAPTER IX

1. Epigraph: Robert Blair, The Grave 11.431–37.

2. hostess: mistress of a lodging establishment.

3. caro sposo: Italian, dear husband.

4. calendar: calendar of days dedicated to the various saints on which rituals or festivals would be observed in their honor.

5. St. James of Compostella: See Chapter I, note for

p. 17, LL. 14–15. St. James’s relics were housed in the town of Compostela, in northwestern Spain.

6. Cain: the firstborn son of Adam. Cain murdered his brother Abel, and his punishment was to wander the earth and to have no crops bear fruit for him.

7. deal: boards of fir or pine.

8. eat flesh upon Fridays: Roman Catholics were supposed to avoid eating meat on Fridays. Fish was not considered to be meat, and some argued that fowl was not meat, either.

9. gallician: a type of chicken, bred in the Spanish province of Galicia.

10. ave-maria: Latin, Hail Mary. A prayer invoking the aid of the Virgin Mary.

11. temporal: temporary.

CHAPTER X

1. Epigraph: William Cowper (1731–1800), Charity, II.254–59.

2. suppositious: imagined, fictitious.

3. St. Lucia: Sicilian martyr whose persecutions included having her eyes put out and who was miraculously able to put them back in again.

4. St. Catherine: Alexandrian martyr. She was put on a spiked wheel that was supposed to kill her, but when it broke, she was beheaded.

5. St. Genevieve: See Chapter VIII, note for p. 234, L. 30.

CHAPTER XI

1. Epigraph: Matthew Prior (1664–1721), Solomon, 525–28, 531–32, 539–44.

2. crow: crowbar.

3. men have died … love”: Shakespeare, As You Like It, IV.i.96–98: “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”

CHAPTER XII

1. Epigraph: James Thomson (1700–1748), The Castle of Indolence, II.1xxviii.1–4.

2. the Holy Office: the Inquisition. See Chapter IV, note for p. 147, L. 35.

3. Grand Inquisitor: the director of the court of Inquisition.

4. Auto da Fé: public execution of one (or many) condemned by the Inquisition.

6. sulphurous fogs … hoarseness: John Dryden (1631–1700), King Arthur, II.i: “I had a voice in Heav’n, ere Sulph’rous Streams / Had damp’d it to a hoarseness.”

7. Sierra Morena: mountain range in Spain, south of Madrid.