The Altar transcribed, encoded, and edited by Robert Whalen Northern Michigan University the National Endowment for the Humanities Northern Michigan University the National Endowment for the Humanities Robert Whalen Transcription, encoding, transformations, and notes Robert Whalen Northern Michigan University the National Endowment for the Humanities Robert Whalen for demonstration purposes only. May not be reproduced without permission.

See witness list.

"The Altar" is part of a comprehensive edition of George Herbert's English verse, The Digital Temple. This larger project includes computer-readable transcriptions, in both original- and modern-spelling versions, of Williams MS. Jones B62, Bodleian MS. Tanner 307, and a copy of The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, first edition (Cambridge, 1633); high-resolution digital images of the sources (excepting the Latin verse in Williams); an apparatus that includes critical, textual, and technical introductions and annotations; and a user interface with which to navigate these materials.

Transcriptions are encoded in TEI(P5)-conformant XML.

Currently, only the Williams images and transcriptions are captured directly from the source. Images (where available) and transcriptions of the Bodleian MS. and first edition are captured from Scolar black-and-white facsimiles.

Apparent errors are preserved and editorial corrections provided using SIC and CORR tags, but only where the editor conjectures that the original scribe or compositor would have recognized the instance as an error. For example, what according to modern usage is incorrect subject/verb agreement might have been deemed acceptable to a seventeenth-century scribe or compositor. All such instances are treated instead using the ORIG and REG tags. (See below.)

Original spellings, abbreviations, and orthography are preserved and regularizations provided. Where in the manuscripts a character's status as majuscule or miniscule is ambiguous, the editor has silently chosen one or the other based on context and judgment (i.e., does not register such ambiguity in either the markup or the notes).

Original quotation marks, if any, are preserved.

Original hyphenation is preserved.

 LATIN LIGATURE SMALL C AND SMALL T LATIN LIGATURE SMALL LONG S AND SMALL H LATIN LIGATURE SMALL LONG S AND SMALL I LATIN LIGATURE SMALL LONG S AND SMALL L LATIN LIGATURE SMALL LONG S AND SMALL LONG S LATIN LIGATURE SMALL LONG S, SMALL LONG S, AND SMALL I LATIN LIGATURE SMALL LONG S, SMALL LONG S, AND SMALL L Dewey Decimal Classification English French Latin 006
Williams MS. Jones B62 Bodleian MS. Tanner 307 The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, first edition (Cambridge, 1633)
The church. The Church 39 The Church. 10
The Altar. The Altar The Altar. See Wilcox (89) for the poem's debt to the pattern and schola cordis (School of the Heart) emblem traditions. The title signifies the stone altar that in Catholic tradition was associated with Christ's sacrifice on the Cross; the speaker's heart offered as a "living sacrifice" (Romans 12:1); the poem itself and The Temple as a whole. (The following poem in all three sources happens to be "The Sacrifice.") Though metaphorically the speaker's heart, the phrase broken Altar/ALTAR in the first line would have provocatively suggested Reformation acts of iconoclasm that included the removal and/or destruction of such remnants of the old religion. Toward the end of Herbert's life, advocates of ceremonial worship and what Archbishop William Laud was to call the Beauty of Holiness boldly restored the altars to a place of prominence in some English churches. The Cambridge printers' innovation in #p—i.e., the upper-case rendering of ALTAR, HEART, and SACRIFICE—foregrounds as complementary the poem's devotional and ceremonial features, and thereby privileges a via media reading of an otherwise ideologically conflicted poem. Indeed, the change from onely to bleſsed in line 15 of witness #w suggests Herbert's concern that onely sacrifice might seem a Protestant emphasis on the uniqueness of the Atonement at the expense of more Catholic notions of Real Presence and the replication of sacrifice in the ritual of the Eucharist. (According to the 31st of the Thirty-Nine Articles, "the Offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.") Such revision exemplifies what historian Anthony Milton has called "negative popery": the increasing tendency of some early Stuart divines to advance Catholic ideas minus the once de rigueur caveats disavowing them. (Catholic and Reformed, 63-72.) Wilcox's reading—that the #w version unrevised "reveals H.'s assumption that there is now only one sacrifice" (93)—seems to suggest that the revision somehow left intact the earlier and more decidedly Protestant assertion. A broken Altar lord thy servant reares rears A broken Altar, Lord, thy servant reares rears A broken A L T A R, Lord, thy ſervant servant reares rears , reares: brings into existence by constructing (OED 9), a meaning at odds with broken only if it is assumed that the speaker could have anything more to offer than a broken heart. The word also connotes raising the dead (OED 3.a), by extension the Resurrection, itself a triumph in which the broken body of Christ is raised to be a glorified body. Made of a Hart Heart and cimented cemented wth with teares tears . Made of a heart, & and cimented cemented with teares tears . Made of a heart, and cemented with teares tears : Whose parts are as thy hand did frame Whose parts are, as thy hand did frame; Whoſe Whose parts are as thy hand did frame; frame: prepare, as a carpenter, for use in building (OED 4). Jesus was a carpenter (Mark 6:3) and is "a son over his own house; whose house are we," for "he that built all things is God" (Hebrews 3:4-6). No workmans workman's toole tool hath touch'd ye the same No workemans workman's toole tool hath touch'd ye the same. No workmans workman's tool hath touch'd the ſame same . A Hart Heart alone A heart alone A H E A R T alone alone: only. Is such a stone Is such a stone, Is ſuch such a ſtone stone , As nothing but As nothing but As nothing but Thy powre power doth cutt cut . Thy power doth cut. Thy pow'r doth cut. Lines 5-8: "Only a heart is so hard as that God's power alone is able to penetrate it." Wherefore each part Wherefor Wherefore each part Wherefore each part Øf Of my hard hart heart Of my hard heart Of my hard heart Meets in this frame Meets in this frame, frame: i.e., the poem; the stone altar of sacrifice; the speaker's body which houses his hart/heart—"My body is the frame wherein 'tis held" (Shakespeare, Sonnet 24, line 3)— and is "the temple of God" (1 Corinthians 3:16). To praiſe praise thy name To praise thy Name. To praiſe praise thy name. That If I chance to hold my peace That, if I chance to hold my peace, That if I chance to hold my peace, Theſe These stones to praiſe praise thee may not ceaſe cease These stones to praise thee may not cease. Theſe These ſtones stones to praiſe praise thee may not ceaſe cease . Lines 13-14: "And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out" (Luke 19:39-40). Ø O lett let thy onely only bleſsed blessed sacrifice bee be mine, O lett let thy blessed sacrifice be mine, O let thy bleſſed blessed S A C R I F I C E be mine, See headnote for the significance of the #w emendation. And sanctifie sanctify this Altar to bee be thine. And sanctify this Altar to be thine. And ſanctifie sanctify this A L T A R to be thine. Lines 15-16: For the multiple significations of Altar/ALTAR, see headnote and the note for line 11. Though the placement of SACRIFICE over ALTAR in #p is fortuitous and perhaps deliberate (as is the "broken" spacing of the words in these as well as lines 1 and 5), the layout in both manuscripts is unremarkable. But for Altar having a majuscule initial, neither word there is distinguished in any way. Had Herbert intended to highlight them in #w (the only source in which he is known to have had a hand), he might have specified an italic script, as indeed he does elsewhere in #w—for example, in the final line of "Poetry" (entitled "The Quiddity" in #b/#p).
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