The Word Sower
The Word Sower
January 25 was the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, which commemorates his dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus. The hymn for the feast’s Vespers (Evening Prayer) is St. Peter Damian’s (d. 1072) beautiful Excelsam Pauli gloriam, which begins:
Excelsam Pauli gloriam
concelebret Ecclesia
quem mire sib(i) apostolum
ex hoste fecit Dominus.
The exalted glory of Paul
Let all the Church extol,
Whom the Lord did wondrously make
From enemy his own Apostle.
The final stanza before the concluding doxology describes Paul “suffusing the world with rays of light in the manner of a gleaming lamp”(micantis more lampadis / perfundit orbem radiis)---which recalls Christ’s Parable of the Lamp under a Bushel (Matthew 5:15).
But the hymn’s penultimate stanza uses a metaphor more specifically appropriate to St. Paul:
Dum verbi spargit semina,
seges surgit uberrima;
sic caeli replent horreum
bonorum fruges operum.
While he scatters the seeds of the Word,
a most bountiful harvest arises;
thus Heaven’s barn is filled
with the fruits of our good works.
“Scattering the seeds of the Word” evokes a famous title of St. Paul—one that was well-known for centuries among Latin-speaking Christians. St. Paul was once known far and wide as the Word Sower---in Latin either seminator verborum or seminiverbius.
But the origin of this title is surprising. For Paul received it not from grateful and admiring fellow Christians, but from pagan philosophers who disdained his vulgar method of spreading the Word.
“Word sower” comes from chapter 17 of Acts of the Apostles, the account of Paul’s visit to Athens, which culminates in his famous sermon at the Areopagus.
Here is the relevant verse (18) from the Douay-Rheims translation (which translates the Latin Vulgate Bible rather than the original Greek):
And certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics disputed with him; and some said: What is it, that this word sower would say? But others: He seemeth to be a setter forth of new gods; because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection.
The Greek word behind both “word sower” and the Latin versions is σπερμολόγος (spermológos). You can get a feeling for its force from the range of translations in modern Bibles. German Bibles have Lotterbube (“babbler”), Schwätzer (“chatterbox”), and—my own favorite—dieser sonderbare Vogel mit seinen aufgepickten Weisheiten (“this strange bird with his picked-up wisdom”). French Bibles offer pie bavarde (“chatty magpie”) and discoureur (“babbler”); and English Bibles give babbler, parasite, gutter-sparrow of a man, parrot, scavenger, vagabond, busybody, ignorant show-off, and dithering seed picker.
How can one word produce such a strange variety of translations?
The answer has to do with the peculiar character of "spermológos." Perhaps the best discussion of the word’s etymology and usage is found in the magnificent Thesaurus Graecae Linguae of the French printer and classical scholar Henri Estienne—better known by the Latin version of his name, Henricus Stephanus.
You can read Estienne's entire entry on spermológos here (pp. 583--584 of the seventh volume). But you will first need to polish up your Latin if it's gotten rusty. Estienne's dictionary defines the Greek words entirely in Latin (sometimes offering a paraphrase, in Greek).
Estienne divides his definition of spermológos into two predominant senses. The first is:
Qui semina legit, ut aviculae quaedam, quae in agris seminatis inter sulcos non bene occa depressos, semina legunt.
One who gathers seeds, just as certain little birds which, in fields sown with seeds, among furrows poorly pressed by the harrow, gather seeds.
This sense of the word, "seed picker," was used both literally and metaphorically.
Literally, it was a descriptor of certain birds---such as the rook---that would flock around farmers as they sowed their fields and pick up as much of the scattered seed as they could. This is why many of the translations I quoted above include various birds or words like "scavenger." "Seed picker" (from David Bentley Hart's translation of the New Testament) or "seed-picking bird" is the primary literal meaning of spermológos. This sense of the word derives from the Greek noun sperma ("seed") and the verb legein ("to gather or pick up").
Metaphorically, spermológos was used in two ways: 1) as a name for people who "spend their time around stores and markets to pick up scraps from the produce and live off them"---i.e., something like our word "trash digger"; and 2) "in pejorative imagery of persons whose communication lacks sophistication and seems to pick up scraps of information here and there." Those definitions come from Walter Bauer's Lexicon. For sense 2) Bauer offers the translations "scrapmonger" and "scavenger."
But what about translations such as "babbler" and "chatterbox"?
This is where Estienne's analysis of spermológos outshines those of more-recent dictionaries. Where the more-recent lexicographers merely list such meanings as "idle babbler, gossip," Estienne demonstrates precisely how that meaning emerged from a word that meant first "seed picker."
In the second half of his entry on spermológos, he writes:
Item σπερμολόγος dicitur ὁ σπείρων λόγους, Qui (ut Plautina phrasi utar) libens verba funditat, Blatero, Locutuleius s[ive] Loquax homo, Verbosus nugator.
Likewise spermológos is used in the sense of "one who scatters words": One who (to use an expression of Plautus) freely pours forth words, a babbler, a talker, or a human chatterbox, a verbose jester.
Estienne's Greek paraphrase ὁ σπείρων λόγους (ho speírōn lógous) clarifies the relevant etymology behind this secondary sense of the word---not, as with "seed picker," from spérma and légein, but from speírein ("to sow") and lógous ("words").
Estienne's phrase could be translated, as I did above, "one who scatters words," but speírein is also the Greek word for "sowing." Therefore the phrase could also be rendered "one who sows words," or, as the Latin translators took it, "word sower."
It is not clear which sense of the word was foremost in the minds of the Athenian philosophers who called St. Paul a spermológos. Did they mean to call him a "trash digger" or a "babbling clown"? It is possible that Paul struck them as being both; or that often the two qualities coincided: the same people who unmethodically scavange bits of learning being likewise prone to spout forth their quasi-learning with vulgar prodigality.
Whatever the case, it is certain that the philosophers' nickname for Paul was no compliment.
So then how did Paul come to be known as Word Sower, in the sense of a preacher of the Gospel?
That particular interpretation received its canonical form in sermon 150 of St. Augustine (354--430 A.D.). In it Augustine preaches on the passage of Acts 17 quoted above. He begins as follows:
Advertit nobiscum caritas vestra, cum legeretur liber Actuum apostolorum, Paulum locutum fuisse Atheniensibus, et ab eis qui praedicationem veritatis irridebant dictum fuisse verborum seminatorem. Dictum est quidem ab irridentibus, sed non respuendum est a credentibus: erat enim revera ille seminator verborum, sed messor morum. (§ 1.5–9)
Your charity noticed with us that, when the book of the Acts of the Apostles was read, Paul spoke to the Athenians, and by those who mocked his preaching of the truth he was called a “sower of words” [verborum seminatorem]. Indeed [the name] was spoken by mockers, but it is not to be rejected by believers: for he was in truth a sower of words [seminator verborum], but also a reaper of good works.
The philosophers who called St. Paul spermológos intended thereby to mock him; yet the Latin translation of the insult in Augustine’s Bible sends his mind running in another direction; for Augustine, too, just like Paul, is engaged in the act of “word sowing”:
et nos licet tantilli et nequaquam illius excellentiae comparandi, in agro dei, quod est cor vestrum, verba dei seminamus, et uberem messem de vestris moribus exspectamus.
We too, in spite of our great smallness and by no means worthy of comparison with his excellence, sow the words of God in the field of God, which is your heart, and we look out for an abundant harvest from your good works.
The very name that was intended to mock St. Paul as either a "trash digger" or "babbling clown" turns out to be a fitting title for a Christian preacher. In Augustine's exegesis, St. Paul the "word scatterer" has now become the Word Sower, the exemplary Sower of God's Word.
But Augustine is still aware of, and indeed embraces, the original pejorative force of the word.
In perhaps the most memorable passage of Sermon 150, Augustine imagines himself, in the place of St. Paul, directly disputing the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. To the Stoic, who believes that the virtue he possesses is due to his own efforts, Augustine replies:
Non virtus animi tui te facit beatum, sed qui tibi virtutem dedit, qui tibi velle inspiravit et posse donavit. Scio quia fortasse irrisurus es me, et eris in eis de quibus scriptum est quia Paulum irridebant. Et si tu via es, ego semino: seminator enim sum verborum pro modulo meo. Quod fuit convicium tuum, officium est meum. Ego semino; cadit in te quod semino, tanquam in terram duram. Ego non piger; et invenio terram bonam. (§ 9.181–187)
It is not the virtue of your own soul that makes you blessed, but He who gave you virtue, who breathed into you the will and gifted the ability. I know that perhaps you will mock me, and will be among those of whom it was written, “they were mocking Paul.” And if you are the road, I am the sower: for I am a sower of words in the small measure of my ability. What you spoke in derogation, is my own solemn obligation. I sow the seed; what I sow falls upon you, as upon hard soil. I am not sluggish; and I find good soil.
Throughout his sermon, Augustine employs Jesus's Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1–23, Mark 4:1–20, Luke 8:4–15). But by connecting the word spermológos or seminator verborum with the sower in the parable, Augustine gives the parable a new dimension. Where the parable emphasizes the adverse conditions which affect the seeds---hungry birds, rocky ground, lack of moisture, and thorns---Augustine's interpretation highlights the scorn, derision, and mockery suffered by the sower.
Luke's version of the parable ends with the following description of the seed that fell in good soil: "they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience." That last word, "patience," in Greek is ὑπομονή (hypomonē). "Patient endurance" might better capture its original force. (For a sense of its full import in the Christian life, see this essay by Ian Paul. Or read this one by Alan Jacobs.) The parable in the Gospels teaches the patience required of believers; Augustine's sermon the patience required of sowers---especially word sowers.
Through St. Augustine’s exegesis of Acts 17:18—perhaps chiefly because of his enthusiastic embrace of the philosophers’ insult as a name for his vocation—the phrase “word sower” took firm root within the good soil of the Latin exegetical tradition. The image of St. Paul the Word Sower continued to appear not only in subsequent homilies and commentaries, but also in Latin Christian culture more broadly---as evidenced by Peter Damian's hymn.
