Tropology in Practice: Alexander Neckam’s Solatium Fidelis Anime

The widely influential exegetical method of tropology, or moral reading, experienced a rise in popularity in the twelfth century. As a generation of scholars brought tropological discourse to a high degree of sophistication and subtlety, moralization flourished in sermons, commentaries, didactic treatises, encyclopedias, and bestiaries. In this article I look at the parameters of tropology by analyzing the hexaemeral treatise Solatium fidelis anime by a master moralist, the English Augustinian canon Alexander Neckam (1157–1217). I focus on the role of analogy in tropological discourse, the mechanism of moral progress, and the interaction of grace and merit against the background of accusations of Pelagian heresy. Neckam’s Solatium shows us that this often noticed but seldom studied method was an effective, living hermeneutic and didactic tool whose marked strengths and weaknesses offer invaluable insight into medieval psychology and understanding of the relationship between the created world and human pro...