Editorial note — Chapter I · OF A CHURCH AND ITS PARTS

[Footnote 167: It is very difficult to find the right meaning of the word ferculum here. The English version gives the passage from the Canticles, 'King Solomon made himself a chariot (marg. reading, bed) of the wood of Lebanon. In the extremely beautiful treatise of Hugo de S. Victore, De Nuptiis Spiritualibus (cap. iii), the fercula nuptialia appear to mean the marriage feast, which is to perform its part in the general Sensuum refectio, by its sweet savours; as the bed or chariot of Solomon is noted for the odour of its cedar wood. However, the same writer devotes five Tituli of his Erudit. Theolog. Ex Miscellan. namely, lix—lxii of the first book, and cxxi of the second, to the consideration of this Ferculum Solomonis: which he decides to be a lectica sen vehiculum, a litter or sedan (such as is now used in Sicily under the name of lettiga), differing from the lectulus or bed (Cant, i, 16), inasmuch as this denotes the repose of the contemplative life, while the ferculum typifies the laborious exercise of the active life; and differing again from the currus or chariot (the only other vehicle mentioned in Holy Scripture), since the latter is drawn on the earth with a grating noise, and represents a depraved heart clinging to earthly things, but the former is borne smoothly and quietly above the ground, an image of the righteous soul despising earthly and seeking heavenly things. Lastly, the ferculum, or litter, typifies the Church, from carrying, a ferendo, as doth the Church her children unto Heavenly Rest.]