Number Theory in George Herbert's "Trinity Sunday" and "Trinitie Sunday"

Abstract

Despite the fact that George Herbert was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, the doctrine of the Trinity does not seem to have been of any great literary or devotional interest to the poet. He employs it to some effect in "The Starre" and "Ungratefulnesse," but his only other recourse to it, in the poems "Trinity Sunday" and "Trinitie Sunday," has elicited little critical interest, and that somewhat censorious in nature. "Trinity" is from the Williams MS, and, together with five other poems, was excluded from the Bodleian MS and hence from the printed text of The Temple.' It is usually assumed by critics who like their poems to be simple, sensuous, and passionate, that "Trinity" was discarded by Herbert in favor of "Trinitie" because he was dissatisfied with it, but this may well be a post hoc rationalization.2 "Trinitie Sunday" is self-evidently a poem about triads: