CHAPTER 14.
King David of Israel exercised an influence over Renaissance theological thinkers which is almost
impossible for a modern, secular, literary critic to imagine. He stood at the imaginative nexus between
sacred history and the new Machiavellian science of political theory. He was a king -- but he was also,
according to scripture, an ancestor of Jesus Christ. He was an awful sinner who wrote the Psalms¹
--
probably the most widely copied, published, read, recited and sung book on the European continent,
among other parts of the world² -- to repent for his sins. As William Whittingham thought of him in the
Argument to I Samuel in the Geneva Bible, David was "the true figure of Messiah placed in [Saul's]
steade, whose pacience, modestie, constancie, persecution by open enemies, fained friends, and
dissembling flatterers are left to the Church to every member of the same, as a paterne and example to
beholde their state and vocation” (f3r). Whittingham may have been taking his cue from Calvin, the
patriarch of Genevan theology whose sister he married. Writing in the introduction to his edition of the
Psalms, as translated by Arthur Golding with a dedication to Edward de Vere in 1571, Calvin saw in
David a mirror for his own condition and inspiration for the proper endurance of his own spiritual
struggles: "whatsoever that most excellent king and Prophet endured, was sette forth too mee for my
instruction” (*vii verso).
The story is an ancient paradigm of upward mobility, from the periphery to the center of political
power. David grew up a shepherd boy, slight in stature, the youngest of a large family of brothers, but he
became one of the most powerful and authoritative kings in the history of the planet. As a boy he seemed
so unpromising that when Samuel visited his family to pick a monarch for Israel, his father did not even
think it necessary to include him --
he was out tending sheep. David's brothers were much more
1
Whatever modern higher criticism thinks of the authorship of the Psalms, Renaissance readers followed the tradition of internal attribution by
which seventy-three of the psalms are said to be the work of David. As the Abingdon Bible Commentary summarizes this tradition, "when the
historical notes to the 'of David' psalms were added, a process still going on about 200 B.C., the phrase was interpreted as denoting
authorship….we know that David was a musician (I Sam. 16.14f), and that he wrote secular poetry (2 Sam. 1.19f , 3.33f). He may therefore have
written religious poetry.” The modern view, however, is that "the fact of Davidic authorship of any of the psalms cannot be maintained with
absolute confidence” (Eiselen 1929 512). It is interesting to observe that what distinguishes modern from Renaissance views on the subject
seems primarily to consist in the modern need to establish "the fact" of authorship "with absolute certainty.” What matters for the present
investigation, however, is that Renaissance readers felt no compulsion to disbelieve the tradition that David was the author of at least quite a
number of the psalms.
2
Such as the Ethiopean Kingdom of Prester John, a historical figure well-known to the Renaissance cosmographers of France or England.
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